Smoked Brown Trout With Jimmy Kennedy
Catch, fillet, soak in Jimmy Kennedy’s easy to make brine and enjoy some delicious smoked trout.
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.

Trout prepped and ready to smoke. (Jimmy Kennedy)

Smoked trout ready to eat or to use in a recipe. (Jimmy Kennedy)
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