BBQ, Wine & The Good Life With SaucyJoe

BBQ, Wine & The Good Life With SaucyJoe

Salmonchanted Evening

It was a smokin’ weekend in the Iowa Sullivan household. Dr. Dave’s wife, the lovely Linda Sullivan, returned from a 2 week journey to Dayton, Ohio where she spent some quality time with possibly the finest grandson in these here contingent United States (Am I prejudiced, or what?). In the interest of allowing her to unwind for her trip, the Dr. fired up the smoker (not that it takes much of an excuse!).

Saturday, the smokin’ fare was the Tennessee Pork Loin with Whiskey, Brown Sugar, and Mustard featured on the Saucy Joe’s website in October, 2005. This one is a real winner at our place. I do not experiment. I just follow the recipe, and the family is happy.

With that success under my belt, I decided to adventure into the seafood arena and smoke some salmon. Now let me tell you, the Sullivans cannot say “no” to their Schwan’s salesman. When I went in search of some frozen salmon, I found four boxes of Schwan’s Alaskan Salmon Filets! Setting a box aside to defrost, I went in search of a nice simple salmon smokin’ recipe. I found one in Smoke and Spice, Cooking with Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue, by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. It was called “Simply Superb Salmon”, and the results were sumptuous! This is a great way to delight your family with very little preparation and work. The recipe is outlined below:

Ingredients:

Salmon:
1 box of Schwan’s Alaskan Salmon Filets (9 filets, ½ inch thick)
Coarse Kosher Salt
Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Lemon Splash:
¾ cup chicken stock
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup unsalted butter (though I don’t know why ‘unsalted’ with as much salt as is added to this splash)
2 tablespoons chopped onion
1 ½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ teaspoons yellow mustard
½ teaspoon Coarse Kosher Salt

Lemon wedges

The Work:

Preparing the Salmon:
· Lay the salmon filets out in a non-reactive shallow dish.
· Sprinkle them rather boldly (whatever that means!) with salt and pepper on both sides.
· Cover and let sit for 20-30 minutes

Preparing the Smoker:
· Chose your chips wisely. I used chips called Charcoal Companion Smoking Wood Chip Blend – Seafood. This is a blend of Mesquite, Chardonnay and Alder chips designed for a nice mild, tasty smoke.
· Fire up the smoker and get it to a temperature of 175-200°F. I kept mine at the lower end of this range.
· Place the chips in the smoke box and set in the smoker.
· Fill the water pan half full of liquid. I used a 50-50 blend of cheap (yes, cheap!) white wine and water.

Preparing the Splash:

· Combine the Lemon Splash mop ingredients in a sauce pan and warm over low heat for 15 minutes stirring continually.

Smoking the Salmon:
· Drizzle (appropriate for yesterday’s weather) the splash over the salmon and place them on wire grills which have been coated with a non-stick spray.
· Smoke for 35-45 minutes to cook the salmon through so it is flaky.
· Mop the Lemon Splash on once at the 20 minute mark and once again just before removing the salmon from the smoker.
· Have a large spatula and a platter ready to remove the, now fragile, salmon from the smoker.

Serve the salmon warm or chilled, garnished with lemon, all the while singing that great South Pacific song…