Smoked Steelhead

That was my first experience smoking some fish. I had some steelhead lying around in my freezer and really wanted to do a low and slow cook.

The first thing I did is to cure that fish and let it wait in the refrigerator for the night. The brine recipe I used was very simple and was not the point of the experience here. I went with a very standard mix of dark brown sugar, kosher salt, crushed garlic and black pepper. I've applied very generous amount of the brine on the fish, wrapped it in double plastic wraps and placed it in a pan in the refrigerator for the night. You should have it cured for at least 8 hours according to my research.




Brine recipe:
- dark brown sugar (1 cup)
- kosher salt (1/2 cup)
- crushed garlic (4 cloves)
- black pepper (2 Tbsp of black pepper)

In the morning, I've unwrapped that fish and rinsed it to remove the largest part of the brine. (that is up to you, but I would find it way too salty if I wouldn't rinse it). Put it back in a pan without anything else on it directly in the refrigerator for the next 2 or 3 hours and start preparing your barbecue for a long cook, building your fire carefully with the biggest pieces at the bottom and making sure it's clean enough.

I was able to keep the temperature between 180˚F and 200˚F for the whole cook, which lasted for about 8 hours. There is no perfect amount of time here, it  really depends on how you like your fish smoked. I saw some people smoke it for as little as one hour, and some go crazy and smoke their fish for a full twenty hour. You'll have to experiment and find out what you like!

Personally I think that my 8 hours cook was a little too long even though it was pure goodness when we ate it, I think it could have been cut in half and be a little more juicy and tender.

Here is how it looked coming out of the egg

The skin of the fish that I left purposefully on came off the fish just by pulling with two fingers and it was smelling so good I was drooling.

We served this with some salad, some cheeses and a good Chardonnay from Chateau Ste-Michelle. We will most definitely do that again, but next time, I'll make a much bigger quantity now that I know it is that good. Once smoked, the fish can be kept for a very long time in the refrigerator without turning bad.

The Greatest Gifts for Christmas

My wife is so awesome, she gave me a DigiQ DX2 BBQ Guru for Christmas as well as the Smokeware stainless steel vented chimney cap so I can cook under the rain. That's pretty much a prerequisite to owning a Big Green Egg in Seattle if you want to be cooking all year long like I do. 

As soon as I got it had to use it even though I didn't have any thing in hands to slow cook, I just made a meat loaf and put it in my dutch oven (this one is perfect for the Large version of the BGE by the way, and much cheaper than the one sold by BGE), with the indirect plate setter at 225˚F for 4 hours. That is pretty much the equivalent of using a crock pot at the "High" setting. It does the exact same result, but if you want to add a little smoky flavour to your food, you just start with the lid open for the first 30 minutes and then you close it off for the rest of the cook. 

Setting up the DigiQ was a breeze and I really don't have anything to complain about. I watched this video and read the instructions to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. The temperature got to 225˚F in about 30 minutes and it kept at this temperature without moving a single degree for four hours. I was truly impressed. There is only one thing I wish I would have known without needing to search that much and it was how was I supposed to open the top vent when cooking. The answer is pretty simple: just open it as you would normally open it without the DigiQ DX2 controlling the temperature, so if you want to make a slow cook, keep it almost closed, and if you want a higher temperature set it to whatever was needed before you were using the DigiQ. For my meat loaf since I wanted to keep it at 225˚F, I just kept it closed except for when I was lighting the fire for the first 10 minutes until my fire starter finished burning.

While this was cooking, I prepared some ribs I had bought at Costco that I had unfrozen as soon as I opened the great gift on the previous day. I just followed those simple instructions from necessaryindulgences.com - Baby back ribs recipe. I wish I could say the process was as straightforward as for my meat loaf, but I forgot an important thing... I forgot to open the damper on the pit blower which really screwed up my start up. I was wondering why the temperature wasn't going up for a while and I was confused until I went back and checked my settings to realize I didn't open the damper! There was basically no air going in the egg except from the top vent, which really didn't help. When I opened the damper, the DigiQ was quite messed up and started blowing crazily without taking breaks, which caused my fire to go berserk. After that, it was very difficult to keep the temperature stable, but the DigiQ was still able to keep it oscillating between 240 and 270 which isn't that bad, it was just not as precise as the previous day.

As a side note, know that the DigiQ DX2 is made to be weather resistant, but not water proof, you have to be a little bit careful about rain and protect it a little. On the ribs day, it was pouring rain and I just put some Ziploc bags on the DigiQ controller as well as the connexion to my electric extension so it doesn't catch any water. I've also just added a little bit of aluminum foil on top of the pit fan blower to make sure it didn't get too wet, and voila, I had a perfect rain proof setup. Here is a very bad picture of the setup I just took. Even though its freezing outside and raining, I am currently cooking some potatoes and sausages for dinner and its being very stable at 350˚F.



Next posts are going to be about recipes I'm trying with photos, but for the moment I really just wanted to talk about my first hands on experience with those new gifts of mine!

Cheers!