Kosher Food and Drink

Despite my reputation as the “smoked meats guy” locally, one of my favorite indulgences is actually fish. Like anything else, making it right and not overcooking it will yield some exceptional eats. In complete support of the Jewish stereotype, I love smoked salmon. And there’s nothing I love more than hot smoked pastrami salmon. It has this amazing blend of pickled, smoky, salty and slightly sweet flavors that really make it a hit at parties and potlucks. It also shines during Shavuos, when you’re sometimes making dairy meals, but want a stand-out protein to go with them.

My pastrami salmon recipe is an amalgamation of a few different recipes I’ve seen online. The summarized steps:

1. Brine 2-3 days
2. Desalinate for 1 day
3. Coat with pastrami spice and a bit of salt
4. Hot smoke

It’s not at all hard to make, but it does have some lead time so you can do the brining. I usually do this one side of salmon at a time – cut it in half if you can’t fit in your brining vessel. If you are looking for a good brining vessel, The Briner combined with a liner is really a great choice.

For the brine, use the following:

• 1 cup of salt
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons of pickling spice
• Enough water to cover the salmon in your brining vessel.

My experience is that as long as you don’t go totally overboard on things, the exact quantities aren’t super important. Make sure you brine in a non-reactive vessel, like a plastic container. Stir it up, mix things around, and give it a good shake once or twice every day.

Once you’ve brined, it’s time to desalinate. Drain your brining vessel, fill it with water to cover the salmon, and let it sit for a day or two. This will mellow out the flavor to “pickled, salty, and slightly sweet, but not overwhelmingly so”. One of the reasons that this pastrami salmon works so well is the pastrami spice has a complementary – but very different – flavor from the salmon itself. If you skip desalinating, my experience is that you wind up with salmon which tastes overly pickled.

Take the salmon out of the desalination water, pick any leftover pieces of pickling spice off it, and pat it dry (gently). For the pastrami spice coating, I highly recommend the Amazing Ribs pastrami rub recipe. It’s not hard to make, and it’s outstanding flavor-wise. Coat the salmon liberally with pastrami spice, and give it a LIGHT dusting of kosher salt.

Finally, it’s time to hot smoke the salmon. You want to go as low and slow as you can get away with, and try to pull the salmon around 130f internal temperature (or lower). Monitor it with your favorite wireless thermometer. If you have difficulty with fish sticking to your grates, I strongly recommend a bed of apple or pear slices. I used to recommend lemon slices, but the milder flavor of apple was a huge hit in our household.

I cannot stress this enough: do not let the internal temperature get away from you. Even if you cook it hot and fast and it takes all of ten minutes to cook, pull that salmon at 130-135f. Salmon is incomparably more juicy at the 125-135f range than the USDA recommended 145f. Your salmon is damaged badly at 145f, never mind the absurdly high temperatures I’ve seen it cooked to in ovens.

Once you’re done, carefully transfer your pastrami salmon to the dish of your choice for service. Resting is not necessary. While it’s possible to carefully reheat it for future eating, I personally think it tastes phenomenal cold, too (this is typically how I serve it at potlucks).

We made this for Shavuos, and it was a huge hit. I may experiment in the future with this recipe by seeing if I can get a curing effect with Prague Powder #1… stay tuned!