smoked fish

[Odyssey]

I have the appropriate wood chips at home to smoke items on the bbq but have never tried it on a canoe trip. I watched a cooking show from the UK in which freshly caught mackerel was smoked in a biscuit tin; the fish laid on a screen under which a small handful of damp and dry wood shavings provided the smoke, all inside the tin. This hot smoking was done over an open fire. I immediately saw the potential in this, although I'm sure non-oily freshwater fish might be smoked as well. Salmon, trout, char, haddock and mackerel are most popular but I'd like to try pike and pickerel. I've seen recipes for catfish and bass.
Has anyone tried this?

This is an interesting link, but it doesn't look like smoking to me, more like the en papillote (parcel) method. http://northernwilds.com/campfire-smoked-fish/

 

[Boreal Birch]

Oddie.......
I've never smoked fish on a canoe trip, but I have smoked a bunch of sockeye salmon over the years. I did read in Sigurd F. Olson's book THE LONELY LAND starting on page149, on and off again through the end of the chapter entitled "Trout Lake Falls" about him smoking some Northern Pike for their next few day's lunches. He smoked his on a grate made of peeled sticks from a beaver house, using dried birch & aspen sticks for smoke (I would use dried peeled alder). He also basted the fillets with bacon grease, because of lack of fat in the pike. Not much help with the biscuit tin method, but it has gotten me to re-reading a wonderful book.
........Birchy
I just now Googled biscuit tin fish smoking method, seems to be a good way of hot smoking. now to find the correct sized biscuit tin (biscuits are cookies in my area, on this side of the Atlantic).

 

[BWCA66]

I've cooked lake trout on soaked cedar planks over an open fire.

 

[Odyssey]

And yet another food group made better with bacon! Thanks for that!
My wife has a cookie tin collection in the pantry I'm not allowed to mess with I'm told. IIRC you're supposed to burn off all the surface treatment before using as a smoker. That, and puncturing the lid is what turned the cookie collection from "ours" to hers. I'm gonna have to go out and buy my own cookies, share them (I am told) and then do whatever the heck I want with the tin. One problem I have with that, besides my wifes one-way street view of "sharing", is where I'm gonna find a cookie tin of the same rough proportions of a fish? I suppose the fish could be cut into steaks. The birch and alder idea sounds good.

Cedar planked trout - great idea. YUM!!!

 

[Iskweo]

Brad, my brother in law smokes whitefish..its pretty good. Maybe something like sheephead might work that way? Or bass of course. You would need a pretty decent sized pike to try smoking it. Or even eating it for that matter. If you start smoking perch or pickerel I will roast YOU over a grate. Cretin.

 

[Boreal Birch]

Found the commercial version of the fish smoker on a UK website.
Might be more practical to make your own from a cookie tin, I'm thinking.
The next trout, char or salmon I catch I am going to give this method a try, I bet it will be great. might ever give it a try with perch or pickerel (walleye) next fall when I am in Northern Minnesota, smoking them can not be any worse than breading them in a beer batter.

 

[Odyssey]

Looks like a chafing dish with warming candles Birchy, kinda like a fondue. Remember, what happens at fondue stays at fondue.
I agree, a homemade version might work just as well. Looking forward to your trout-char-salmon smoker report.

 

[lowangle al]

My friend who is a chef used to smoke trout for his restaurant in something that looked like that. That was about 20 years ago so I don't remember if it was done in a store bought devise or something he rigged up himself.