Smoked Brown Trout With Jimmy Kennedy

You can see we have a

couple of beautiful brown trout here

that we caught a while back,

and I cleaned them

and put these in the freezer

from ice fishing

and took them out and thaw out yesterday.

And we’re going to put them in a brine.

Then we’re going to smoke these babies

and come up with a couple of recipes.

These are good-sized fish.

So we’re going to smoke

them whole and will leave the head on.

So we had to kind of clean

these things up.

I’m using a just a butter knife

right from the kitchen or a spoon,

and you want to get all the scales off.

And it’s pretty easy, like I said,

and they make tools for this.

But you already have a butter knife.

You already have a spoon.

It doesn’t hurt just to use that.

bit on the back?

We’ll, to get all that,

just keep going until you get

all the scales off.

They were going to put them right in this good brine here.

And there’s a lot of different brines

out there,

but the one I use is super simple

and it’s foolproof.

It works every time. It really does.

This is just two quarts of water,

two cups of brown sugar.

It is about a cup of salt, three quarters

of a cup of salt,

two tablespoons of soy sauce,

two tablespoons of granulated garlic.

And as you just mix that

in all dissolves together,

when that’s ready,

you just put the fish in

and brine it forever. As long as you like.

Like I said today,

we probably can go six hours,

but I go overnight

a lot of times, and that works too.

So the key ingredient in my brine

or any brine is the salt.

All the other things are important,

but the salt, is the key ingredient,

that’s what helps preserve it as well

as to give it a beautiful flavor.

And and even with the appearance,

the brines are important here, too,

because when you take that

fish out of the brine

and you let it dry super good and dry,

then it kind of helps form that pelical.

The pelicals is what gives it that

almost mahogany look, when it

smoked, you know,

almost looks like it’s varnish.

It’s just a clear

film, almost of delicious flavor.

And you just want to make sure

that everything is completely submerged.

You don’t really want

any of the flesh or skin showing

which is kind of happening here.

So what we do is

we just put a little bit

of weight on there.

I have to do this a lot.

We’re going to let this

soak like I say, for about six

hours, I’ll come back in

about three hours and do what

we call an overhaul,

which is simply just turning things,

making sure it’s all covered

and there’s nothing exposed expose.

And it just helps, you know,

get every piece of the fish

completely brined.

OK, so the fish has been drying

for about eight to 10 hours.

I said six, but we went ahead,

let it go the extra extra time.

But you can see it did

it did a good job of drying out.

It’s nice and wrinkly here

and it’s super dry.

And I ended up taking the backbone

out of this one, which I think

gives it a more even smoke,

especially on the inside of the fish

where the meat is.

And that’s a really easy process,

especially after it’s

been soaking in the brine so long.

You can just take your knife.

Either side of the backbone like that

make a good cut there,

or you can take the scissors,

which I got started here and use.

Do either side

go all the way down,

just reach in there

and this thing just pulls

right out just like that

all the way down really easy,

takes a little bit of time,

but make it look pretty .. it is worth it.

So we got the fire

right at where we wanted.

It’s about seeing one seventy five now,

but it’ll be two hundred in the second.

I just keep working in there

but both cleaned up,

went through, got some more bones out.

We are finally ready to get this thing,

you know, to smoke.

You can hear that fire.

Sounds good.

I’ll put them both

skin side down.. right on top.

If you don’t have a smoker at home,

smoke, fish or whatever,

you can use a chargrill.

Just think of it

more as like an indirect fire.

Put all your charcoal on one side

and then you’ll have indirect smoke

coming over the smoke, whatever you want.

It’s not that difficult and it does work.

So. All right.

But we are going to let this go for about an hour.

We’ll come back and check it out.

We’re going to be just right.

All right.

we’ve had the fish smoking for about

four or five hours now.

We checked with a couple of times, but

it looks done to me

beautiful, shiny

from the pelical place, mahogany.

But they kind of look like a varnish to it.

You want to call it.

Bite.

OK, so we got our finished product.

This is a smoked trout that June

and I smoked a week ago

and we’ve kind of been saving this away

for a special occasion.

And this is an occasion today

we’re going to turn this into something

good, I believe.

But you can you can use it for recipes

like we’re going to do today

or you can use it as is.

You know, just put some in your backpack,

go hiking with it, put it in your bow

for hunting, for camp

, for home, anything.

It makes the perfect snack.

It’s super healthy.

It’s got a lot of protein

and is really, really good.

And just break it apart.

You get all this good fish

in here, smells so good.

Look at all the good stuff.

We’ve got to turn it into

something today. All right.