David McGovern beats the smoking ban
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- Published on Sunday, 15 November 2009 19:12
- Written by David McGovern
You can’t smoke in the pub anymore. You can’t smoke at work, or on a bus or even at a football match. But you can smoke in your back garden. I smoke out the back of my garage. Not fags of course but trout, bacon, cheese, lamb and the odd pheasant or pigeon gets the smoke treatment in a recycled ‘Old Fettercairn’ whisky hogshead. The hogshead is a large barrel of 52½ imperial gallon capacity. Mine was acquired by phoning the distillery and asking if they had a spare one, most distilleries will have a few old ones lying around that can’t be repaired. I gave the distillery boys a few quid for a pint in return. All sorts of containers can be pressed into service as fish smokers from old fridges and chest freezers to outside toilets and garden sheds, however, the whisky hogshead just looks so right for the job…
I started smoking fish about 10 years ago. I converted a biscuit tin into a smoker by banging holes in the lid with a nail then cutting a piece of wire gauze to sit just off the base of the tin. A layer of sawdust was added to the bottom of the tin and a piece of tinfoil placed on top of the sawdust to stop the fat of the smoking/cooking fish from landing on the sawdust. The trout was placed on the wire rack and the tin was placed on a gas camping stove for 40 minutes. The results were a little bit variable and the smoker had a tendency to produce very dark, very heavily smoked fish. I liked them, but they lacked a little finesse! The fish were hot smoked- cooked as well as smoked. The fish were not brined (more of that later). If you are going to try such a simple smoker, remember to make the holes in the lid from the inside. Otherwise the holes fill up with little puddles of sticky tar.
My next smoker was an American electric smoker bought on the internet. The ‘Little Chief’ is an excellent hot smoker. Basically a metal box with a lid and metal racks for holding the fish, the Little Chief has an electric kettle element in the bottom, upon which sits a little metal pan. You add sawdust to the pan and sit it on the element. The beauty of this arrangement is that the smoke density in the smoker is quite light so you avoid that slightly bitter taste found in some over-smoked fish. The Little Chief also came with a simple instruction book which covered basic brining techniques; it was just what I was looking for. By brining the fish before smoking them, the end product was much improved. The Little Chief was also (in theory anyway) capable of cold-smoking. In cold smoking the temperature doesn’t exceed 37°C. The key difference compared to hot smoking is that the fish does not ‘cook’ as the temperature is not high enough to melt the fat in the fish. Ideally, the temperature should stay in the 20-26°C range. The Little Chief method of cold-smoking involved putting a big cardboard box over the open smoker and using garden canes to support the cardboard box. Not entirely practical. That Little Chief served me well for years, it was just the right size to take a couple of brace of wild trout and smoke them lightly to hot-smoked perfection.
I was learning a bit about smoking and reading a lot of books about brining, curing and smoking. I tried numerous recipes and methods for brining the fish. I found that I got the best results with wet-brining (submerging the fish in a brine) as opposed to dry curing (rubbing dry salt into the fish). I also found that the best brine was a simple one. Books on smoking will give you all sorts of brine recipes and specific quantities but I found a simple brine of salt and sugar is best for me. All you really need is salt. I add salt to cold water and dissolve it by mixing until I can float a raw potato in it. Then I add some brown sugar which helps to keep the fish tender. That’s it. I sometimes throw some herbs into the brine but I can never taste them afterwards so I usually don’t bother. After the fish has been smoked, a little dill sprinkled over it really helps the flavour.
When I moved house in 2003, I decided to build a more substantial smoker. There was plenty of space out the back of my garage which gave me scope to build the smoker I wanted without having to worry about the aesthetic qualities of the contraption spoiling the look of the house and garden! Having acquired the hogshead, I needed a firebox to contain the sawdust and fire. By this time the Little Chief had come to end of its useful life so I removed the heating element and cut a round hole in the side with a cold chisel to take the 6 feet length of chimney liner that would carry the smoke (and cool it) into the base of the hogshead. The hogshead itself would sit on a base of 2 courses of breeze blocks. For internal racks, I drilled holes in the sides of the barrel and inserted steel rods that I had cut to size at my local blacksmiths. I cut a square hole in the top and fitted an adjustable vent (from B&Q) so that I had a lid - and control over the smoke density.
The new smoker worked a treat, although I did have some problems getting the smoke to flow up the chimney liner and keeping the sawdust smouldering without it either flaring up (and hot smoking the product) or going out. This got a little easier with practice and I managed to fulfil an ambition to cure and smoke a whole side of pork. The cured pork was smoked for nearly 2 whole days without the smoke dying completely.
These days I normally use a small gas stove in the firebox, with a pan of sawdust on top for smoking cheese and fish. I still use the same stove that I used with the biscuit tin! This gives much more control over the burn than simply lighting sawdust in the firebox. For smoking pheasants, bacon and lamb (which need smoke over a long period of time) I still light the sawdust in the firebox. I have a plan to build a brick firebox to give me much more control as the wee metal firebox is too cramped really.
Obviously, you can’t smoke anything unless you have some smoke-producing fuel. In the past I had often used the sawdust in small bags from a tackle shop. This was fine for the wee electric hot smoker where a bag might last for 10 or so smokings. The cold smoker would need a lot more so I needed to find a source of good, uncontaminated hardwood sawdust. Phoning around sawmills is the best way to get decent amounts of sawdust economically. I’ve collected sawdust from a few places but now use a wee place in Fife where they let me fill about 5 bin bags at a time of lovely oak sawdust. I always leave them a few pounds of smoked cheese as a thank-you. Everyone loves smoked cheese.
In the summer, I’ll build that new firebox and increase the height of the hogshead to help the smoke find its way up into the smoker. Then I’m going to fulfil another ambition- to smoke a whole haunch of venison in peat smoke. I’m also going to try smoking some wee wild trout in heather twigs from the hillside around the loch they came from. Until then, I’ll get by on the smoked trout, smoked bacon and smoked trout pates stockpiled in my freezer.
Here are a couple of my favourite recipes. One for smoked trout pate and the other for a non-smoked cured fish that you can make in your fridge.
Hot smoked-trout pate with horseradish
The quantities are approximate. Use good quality horseradish sauce.
About a pound of de-boned hot smoked trout (I cold smoke mine then cook it- much the same result)
Juice of half a lemon
180g of cream cheese
30g of butter (helps the pate to spread on hot toast- you can leave this out and add a bit more cream cheese instead)
Some dill
Some salt and black pepper
A tablespoon of good horseradish sauce
Bung it all in a blender and thrash it on full power for a couple of minutes then spoon into pots. I use old cream cheese containers. Freezes well. Very easy to give away so make sure you keep some for yourself!
In-the-fridge Gravadlax
A bigger fish is best as you need a couple of good sized fillets. Traditionally salmon is used and fillets in multiples of 2 are placed in a wooden crate, weighted down with wooden planks. Not very practical in the fridge! I use 2 trout fillets wrapped in clingfilm with a chopping board on top, with tins of beans on top of that to weigh it down. It’s ready in 2 days and is utterly delicious.
2 large trout fillets (from a 2-3 pound fish)
2 Tablespoons of sea salt
1.5 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of black pepper
Lots and lots of fresh dill. Use the stuff in jars if need-be but use a lot more. Then add some more.
Wash the fillets then dry them with paper towels then lay out a large sheet of clingfilm.
Sprinkle some of the curing mixture on the clingfilm then lay the first fillet skin-side down on the mixture. Then add more mixture and lay the other fillet on top, with the skin facing up. What you want is a ‘sandwich’ of fillets with the skin facing out the way. Sprinkle more of the curing mixture on top then wrap tightly in the clingfilm so the whole package is sealed. Place in a dish and put a small chopping board on top, with a few tins out of the cupboard on top to apply pressure. Turn the package over twice a day and leave in the fridge for 2-3 days.
Sometimes served with a mustard sauce but just as nice on its own, sliced like smoked salmon. The Norwegians sometimes fry slices of it too and serve it with boiled tatties.
David McGovern was born in Broughty Ferry but his father maintains he was conceived in Angus which is way too much information for a father to tell his son. He has fished all over Scotland having started his fishing career on the humble Dighty Burn and the mighty River Beauly. A frequent visitor to the Outer Hebrides and the wilds of Assynt, he fills in time between wild fishing trips on his local waters at Monikie in Angus where he lives a stone’s throw from the water with his wife, Gillian and two laddies, Robbie and Jamie. He works as an IT business manager and still fishes the Dighty Burn.