Preserving Fish
Another late post ;)
While the high altitude lakes are now frozen over, we managed to pay them a visit before the weather set in to do spot of fishing for some Cut Throat Trout. Two we froze for another day and two I decided to have a go at preserving by salting and cold smoking, but I wanted to do it the way I thought it should be done and later compare my technique with a how-to for preserving fish online.
After cleaning the fish I made small diagonal incisions about 1/2 inch apart along each side of both the fish. I then rubbed a very generous amount of good, course grade sea salt into the flesh, making sure it got into the cuts. While the fish were marinating in the salt for about an hour I got the smoker ready. Since not having a true cold smoker, I used our greatly under valued clay chimney fire place, the height of the chimney was just enough to allow the smoke to cool as it rose and the fire was kept to a smolder to maximize the smoke and not cook the fish, since the objective is to draw out the liquids and preserve with the smoke.
The one downside to using this equipment was I had to keep returning to the fire every 20min to stop it either burning out or catching a flame, I did this for 10hours. Over all the preserving experiment went really well, the salted smoked fish kept fresh for 2 weeks in the refrigerator and made a nice creamy smoked fish pasta sauce. On reviewing my method online, the one thing I will do next time is soak the fish in a brine over night to allow the salt to get completely through the flesh. 
