Ken H's Smoked Trout 
| Ken H's Smoked Trout Recipe |
| Written by Ken H (Forum Regular) | |
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Smoked Lake Trout
As a shore fisherman one of the pleasures I look forward to in the late fall and early winter is being able to bring home a Laker. And perhaps the best way to enjoy the catch is by hot smoking it. If you’ve never had smoked Lake Trout, it’s fairly common further up north and in Canada. Tastewise I think it goes neck to neck with smoked Whitefish, from which it’s literally indistinguishable.
Equipment: A smoker. They come in all sizes but I use the super small cheap model “Little Chief” made by Luhr Jensen. Yes, the people who make the Crocodile spoons. Smokers come in all sizes and degrees of sophistication, some including thermometers. But in principle, it’s nothing more than a contained box into which fish can be placed on racks and low heat can be applied, including the smoldering of wood chips. On one episode of Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” on the Food Network he built a smoker out of a large cardboard box and hot smoked a side of salmon.
Ingredients: One Lake Trout (2-4 lbs) Salt 1 cup White Sugar ½ cup Brown Sugar ½ cup Black Pepper as desired
Optional: Kosher Salt instead of regular salt. Additionally other spices can be added as well. I sometimes add Dill.
Procedure: Dress Trout by scaling lightly, then removing head, gills and gutting. Ensure that the stomach cavity is completely clean. I use an old toothbrush for this purpose.
Cut fish into chunks.
Small trout usually can be smoked whole. However Lakers are usually too large for this and cutting into chunks works well. If the fish is filleted, the brine is absorbed too quickly producing an excessively salty product, and in many cases it becomes overcooked as well.
  Prepare the Dry Brining mixture in a mixing bowl. Using a wisk allows for the brown sugar chunks to be broken up.
Place the fish chunks into a glass bowl/container and sprinkle generously with the brining mixture, making sure that the stomach cavity is well coated as well.
Place bowl with cover, or Saran wrap into the refrigerator. The fish will start leaching out water in just 2-3 hours. Keep overnight for 10 to 12 hours, flipping the fish over so it soaks in it’s own brine juice.
After 12 hours remove from refrigerator, and quickly wash the salt and brine off of he fish under cold running water. Then pat dry with a paper towel. This fish should now me placed on a rack with ventilation and allowed to dry for at least 3-4 hours. I use a small fan to speed up the drying process. During this time the proteins in the fish form a light “skin” called a pellicle over the entire fish, trapping in the moisture.
 After drying, the fish is placed on the rack and put into the smoker.
 \The fish is smoked for a period of 8 to 10 hours, with the wood chips added at least 3 times. The process of hot smoking a fish is really very slow cooking at low heat. The addition of smoke from burning wood chips is simply for the flavor.
This time is based on current outdoor temperatures. If it were warmer the cooking time would have to shortened.
The finished product should be golden bronze in color and the skin becomes tough like leather.
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