This Is How Smoked Salmon Is Really Made

It's hard to imagine a time when we had to salt and smoke meat as a method of preservation. Today, we smoke foods like salmon to add flavor to our meals. A bagel and cream cheese is just okay, but add a few slices of lox, capers, and red onions to the mix, and you have something magical. Toss it in your favorite salads, sandwiches, frittatas, deviled eggs, or soup; you name it, and smoked salmon will probably make it better. But it wasn't always this way: back in the day, people cured salmon in smoke to preserve it. According to The New York Times, the Indians in the Pacific Northwest smoked salmon for two weeks so it would keep without refrigeration. It was likely tough and less palatable than fresh salmon, but it wouldn't spoil over time.

As time went on, we've refined our salmon smoking process until it's pretty well perfected (and, if we don't mind saying, completely delicious). What starts as a regular piece of salmon and a handful of salt turns into a flavorful, texturally rich eating experience. And depending on which twists and turns you take along the way, your fillet can become a cured fish like lox or gravlax, go the cold-smoked route and gain a silken, melt-in-your-mouth texture, or join the ranks of sweet and salty, flaky hot-smoked salmon. Here's how you get there.

According to Moment magazine, lox was invented when salmon from the Pacific Northwest was shipped east packed in salt. The salt pulled the moisture from the fish resulting in a brine that preserved the salmon for months. It was salty, affordable, and pareve, so it became popular among Jewish immigrants because they could eat it with dairy. This type of "smoked salmon" often isn't actually smoked at all, but cured (similar to the Swedish dill-cured salmon, gravlax). We're not exactly sure how it got lumped into the smoked salmon category, but it's almost always made with salmon belly, the fattiest, most flavorful part of the fish.

To make things more complicated, there's another version of lox — Nova lox — that gained popularity with the advent of refrigeration. Because it was no longer necessary to brine the fish as a method of preservation, smokehouses reduced the amount of salt they used to cure the fish and cold smoked it to deepen the flavor. Traditionally, you won't find Nova made from belly, though; that's still reserved for the real-deal lox.

Since salmon's flavor gets concentrated as it cures and smokes, the type of salmon you choose has a lot to do with the flavor you end up with. That said, you can make smoked salmon out of any kind, so use what you have. Keep in mind that each salmon species has a unique oil content. Salmon with a lot of oil (like king or sockeye) is more full-flavored and will retain its moisture more efficiently as it smokes. Salmon like Atlantic or coho are lower in oil with a pale color and a more mild flavor. These fish are best for those who prefer a lighter fish and a dryer texture.

While you want the salmon to be fresh, that doesn't mean it can't be frozen. If your choices are smelly "fresh" fish or pristine frozen fish, the latter is the better choice every time. The flavor of the salmon will intensify as it goes through the smoking process, and if it developed an off, fishy flavor because it was spoiling, it definitely won't taste very good after it's smoked. Because freezing fish causes the cells to burst, it actually allows the fish to take in more of the brine and smoke flavors, too. You'll just want to make sure the fish is fully thawed before moving on to the next step, as salt can't penetrate frozen tissue.

We're really close to tossing that fish on the smoker! Now that's it's been cured, there's only one more step before we can add that delicious, smoky flavor. It's time to develop the pellicle, a skin that forms on the surface of food as it's exposed to air and moisture is removed. Professional kitchens often use a fan and higher temperatures to form a pellicle on salmon in as little as 30 minutes, but most at-home recipes call for drying salmon at room temperature for one to three hours.

This might seem like a step you could skip if you're in a hurry, but that protective layer has a few functions. First, it traps moisture inside the fish, ensuring that your final smoked salmon will be moist despite the long smoke time. It also gives the finished product an attractive glean and helps the smoke adhere to the meat as it cooks, making your smoked salmon that much more flavorful. 

Cold-smoked salmon is tasty, but it's riskier than its hot-smoked cousin. That's because with cold smoking, the smoker never reaches temperatures above 80 degrees Fahnerheit. You see, food needs to be above 140 degrees Fahrenheit or below 40 degrees to stay out of the so-called "danger zone." Bacteria responsible for foodborne illness grows rapidly inside this range (according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), they can double in number in a little as 20 minutes). Not only that, but the USDA's minimum internal cooking temperature for fish is 145 degrees, which means cold-smoked salmon is technically raw.

It's not all bad, though. The lack of heat gives the salmon a vibrant color. It also retains more moisture, giving it a textural leg-up on flaky hot-smoked salmon, and it kind of melts in your mouth as you eat it. Because you took the time to cure the fish, it is usually safe to eat, although extreme care should be taken when handling this unpasteurized fish. So long as you've practiced good sanitation, bought it from a source that you trust, and don't have a compromised immune system, eating it shouldn't be a problem.

Salmon prices vary widely depending on quality and availability. As of June 2019, salmon was available from $8 to $12 per pound for Atlantic (farmed) salmon (depending on the season and location), and $11 to $20 for wild-caught varieties. An online retailer listed a whole side of smoked salmon for $29 per pound, and smoked salmon jerky was the most expensive at $48 per pound. You might expect the smoked varieties to be a little more pricey consider how much work it took to salt, dry, and smoke the fish. But is it reasonable to charge that much more?

It is when you consider how much less the fish weighs after all this. There's a lot of waste involved in processing fish. The European non-profit media agency, Youris.com, estimates that only 50 percent of every salmon is eaten: the heads, skin, and bones are undesirable and are usually discarded instead of being turned into a value-added products. Not only that, but fish lose additional weight as they're salted and smoked, about 16 to 18 percent. That means an average, 30-pound salmon will yield as little as 12 pounds of edible smoked salmon. To put it in more relatable terms, each one-pound salmon fillet from the store turns into 13 ounces of smoked salmon, effectively losing a portion size. No wonder the prices are significantly higher per pound for smoked salmon.

Even though smoked salmon is more expensive than its fresh counterpart, it's nowhere near as pricey as seafood specialties like caviar and sushi-grade tuna. And yet, smoked salmon has a fancy feel about it (not to mention a delectable flavor). As a bonus, the ingredient is dietary-restriction-friendly; pescatarians and meat eaters alike love it, and it's naturally gluten-free and low-carb. Throw a dinner party and use smoked salmon in every course, and you're unlikely to receive any complaints.

For breakfast, the bagel, cream cheese, and smoked salmon combo is hard to beat, but we love chopping it and folding into scrambled eggs as an easy way to elevate a simple dish. Get fancier with it and design a benedict with hollandaise around it, or whip up an asparagus and salmon frittata. If you're looking for a quick snack or an easy appetizer, smoked salmon is the perfect way to fancy up stuffed mushrooms, or you can serve it on toast with sliced avocado and a few radishes for color. For a fun little party bite, spread sour cream or cream cheese over cucumber coins and top them with a bit of smoked salmon. As far as heartier mains go, feel free to use in place of bacon in your favorite recipes. You can't go wrong with smoked salmon chowder, using it as a pizza topping, or stuffing it inside potatoes for a fun riff on loaded baked potatoes.