Smoking bream at home. Smoked bream at home

Hot smoked bream is a dish loved by many, especially those who like to relax in nature. Traditionally, such food is prepared in the summer and spring, or simply outside a stuffy apartment. This article will provide recipes for hot smoked bream.

Smokehouse recipe

Let's look at the first recipe using the smoking technique in a smokehouse. Hot smoked bream is very tender and aromatic.

What will you need?

Of course, in addition to the products themselves, we need a smokehouse. You can use a portable one. We will also need a place where we will place this smokehouse, or rather, on what. For example, a barbecue or a homemade structure in which you can light a fire is suitable.

Products:

• The bream itself, its quantity is not so important.
• Salt and Here it is worth saying that spices can be anything. It all depends on the taste of the fish; if it is quite rich, then you can use more aromatic spices. But if the fish has a weak taste, then you need to understand that very spicy seasonings will completely drown it out.
• And the most important thing is the wood chips. You can buy wood chips or collect them yourself. They can belong to various types of wood, but not coniferous. Common species: cherry, fig, alder, plum.

Well, that's all, now let's see how to smoke hot smoked bream.

Cooking process

Cooking will be described for your convenience in the format of step-by-step instructions. This option is quite fast and will not take much time.

Step 1. Naturally, before cooking you need to clean the fish, remove its giblets and rinse well. After drying a little, the fish should not be wet.

Step 2. The number of wood chips used depends on the amount of fish. To guide three medium-sized fish, you need to use half the wood chips. You don't need too much and you'll ruin the product. Pour water over the wood chips and let them stand for about 30 minutes. This is necessary so that hot smoke comes out of the wood chips, but not soot.

Step 3. Take our fish and generously rub it with the prepared spices on all sides, including the inside.

Step 4. Arrange the wood chips evenly on the bottom of the smokehouse, then install the grate itself and place the fish carcasses on the grate. After this, close the smokehouse with a lid.

Step 5. Take our smokehouse and bring it to the fire. The heat should be more active at first, but should become smaller as the fish cooks.

Step 6. The cooking time should be noted after you notice smoke coming out from under the lid. For bream, about 15 minutes will be enough. You can check by opening the lid slightly and pulling out a dorsal fin or piece of meat. The meat should be white, but not transparent. Don't keep the fish for very long as it will turn black, making it almost impossible to eat.

Step 7. Golden-colored fish should be served cold. It is in this case that the taste qualities of hot smoked bream are felt most clearly. Additionally, you can decorate the dish with herbs or vegetables to your liking.

Recipe for Russian oven

Another method of hot smoking bream at home is proposed. This is an ancient method of smoking in a Russian oven. Let's move straight to the cooking method, since the ingredients are not much different from the previous recipe.

Step 1. Clean the fish from giblets and remove the scaly coating, wash.

Step 2. Salt the bream well and leave to salt for a day. After the expiration of the daily time, the fish must be wiped.

Step 3. The fish should be pierced with wood chips and placed on the grill.

Step 4. We heat the stove with wood containing resin, and place the prepared grate with fish next to it.

Step 5. Do not close the damper of the stove completely, leave a small gap at the bottom, then the smoke will come out into the chimney, which will also smoke the fish.

Step 6. Once golden brown on one side, turn the bream over and smoke the other. After this you can take it out and serve it on the table.

Smoke on a baking sheet with straw

Here we suggest using a baking tray covered with straw. The straw should be a little damp so that it does not blaze, but smolders. The fish should be well salted, laid on top of straw.

Naturally, after this you need to put the baking sheet directly on the fire, which should be of medium intensity. Due to the heating moment, the straw will begin to smoke and permeate the bream with its aroma. Thus, the bream will be both smoked and baked.

The only thing worth noting is that there must be a sufficient amount of straw. If the fish is large, then more, if it is small, then less.

How to smoke fish in an apartment?

If it so happens that you don’t have a stove, barbecues, or just a smokehouse, then you can cook hot smoked bream right in the oven! Perhaps you are now thinking about “liquid smoke”? No. Today we are not talking about it, and in general it is not a very healthy substance.

We are for a healthy lifestyle, and therefore we will smoke bream using natural wood chips. To the great joy of city residents, large shopping centers can offer us a package of “Home Smokehouse” or “Express Smokehouse”. This is a wonderful set in which you will find not just a bag, but also the wood chips themselves.

How to cook?

Everything is quick and couldn’t be simpler, so it’s suitable even for those who don’t really like to tinker around in the kitchen for a long time. Step-by-step preparation:

• Step 1. You need a fully prepared bream. There's nothing new here. We clean, wash, wipe dry, salt generously (especially inside). You can add pepper and other spices as desired. In general, the carcass is ready.
• Step 2. Take our bag and pour the wood chips that come in the set into it. Place the longer side on a baking sheet in the oven (the shorter side should act as a “visor”). We distribute the chips evenly along the “lying” side of the package.
• Step 3. The set contains a separate piece of foil, so you need to cover the wood chips with it and only after that place our bream on the surface of the wood chips covered with foil.

• Step 4. Set it to about 300 degrees and wait a little less than an hour. Of course, you need to check the fish periodically and generally focus on the power of your oven.
• Step 5. The golden-colored fish can be taken out and served!

Separate advice for those who do not have huge supermarkets in the city or simply did not find this package in them. Everything can be done at home from ordinary foil. The same "package". And you can find wood chips in the forest yourself.

Conclusion

As you can see, you can cook hot smoked bream almost anywhere and in almost any conditions. There would be a desire!

When it comes to bream, the image of a smoked fish pops into your head. Only dried carcasses can compare with it in taste. And although it does not last long, this is definitely not a problem: no one will let it sit for a long time!

The best way to prepare bream is smoking, which gives it a unique aroma. For many, this is just a snack, although fish can rightfully become a full-fledged dish for a daily or holiday table. Today it is much easier to go to the store and buy ready-made products, but not everyone undertakes cooking on their own. But in fact, smoked bream is very simple to make.

Calories and nutrients

Smoked bream retains all vitamins and minerals. Meat contains microelements that are responsible for all metabolic processes in the body - potassium, phosphorus, chlorine, chromium and iron; it is a source of calcium, nickel, sodium, which support the functioning of organ systems.

Meat does not contain as many other useful substances as plant foods, while fish contains B vitamins, as well as A, C, E.

Animal products are rich in proteins with relatively low fat content. Therefore, 100 grams of smoked bream gives the body:

• Calorie content - 142 kcal;
• Proteins - 26.5 g;
• Fats - 4.0 g;
• Carbohydrates - 0 g.

Bream fillet reduces the risk of developing hypertension and stroke, promotes weight loss and is recommended for dietary nutrition.

Cold smoked bream - classic recipe

How to properly salt bream for smoking? First, the carcass should be prepared. The fish is cleaned, gutted, and washed under running water. It is salted in the same way as before frying. It is important to salt bream at home only around the head. The container with carcasses is left for 2-3 days.

The next step in the instructions on how to properly make smoked bream is drying. The belly is expanded with a toothpick, the fish is hung in a ventilated place.

Burning splinters and sawdust are covered so that the smoke goes down the chimney to the fish. The length of the pipe must be at least two meters so that the heat from the fire does not transfer to the smoking carcasses. After a day, the smoked bream is ready.

Bream in a hot smoked smokehouse

The easiest way to smoke is to use a smokehouse with a water seal. Before smoking bream, you need to prepare high-quality sawdust. One glass is enough at a time. They are soaked in water for half an hour so that the wood does not burn in a few minutes, but actively produces smoke.

The insides of the carcasses are cut out, and the head is also cut off if desired. The washed and dried meat is rubbed with a salt mixture and seasonings.

Smoking bream in a smokehouse begins at high temperature, then it gradually decreases and the process itself takes only 25-30 minutes.

As soon as the bream turns golden, you should check it for readiness. Most likely, the fish is already cooked.

Bon appetit!

Smoked bream is an amazingly tasty product with a special aroma. The technology for its preparation is quite simple, but it is multivariate. Therefore, you need to know how to smoke bream at home using cold and hot methods.

Smoked bream is an amazingly tasty product with a special aroma. The technology for its preparation is quite simple, but it is multivariate. Therefore, you need to know how to smoke bream at home using cold and hot methods. Cold smoked bream can be stored for a long time, since the cooking procedure does not involve high-temperature treatment. This means that the fish retains the maximum amount of vitamins and nutrients. Hot smoked bream turns out to be more juicy, but this dish is a perishable product.

Cold smoking at home

The cold smoking method involves treating fish with cold smoke. Since smoke components have a preservative effect, the shelf life of the resulting product increases to 2-3 months. The calorie content of cold smoked bream is 160 kcal per 100 g of product. In order for smoked bream, the preparation of which is quite simple, to be tasty and aromatic, it is necessary to equip a home smokehouse in a barn or under a canopy. The main condition for proper smoking is that the temperature of the smoke with which the fish will be processed should not exceed 25°C. Depending on the size of the carcasses, the smoking process can take from 1 to 3 days.

In order for smoked bream, the recipe for which calls for cold smoking, to retain all the beneficial substances and vitamins, it must be properly prepared. First, the bream must be thoroughly washed and the gills removed. There is no need to peel fish from scales, as this will preserve the juiciness of the product during cooking. Then you need to carefully make a cut along the spine to ensure better salting. After this, the fish needs to be salted. Salting bream before smoking can be done in two ways:

• By rubbing the fish with dry salt;
• By soaking in saline solution.

The approximate salt consumption for dry salting is one tablespoon per kilogram of fish. To prepare salt brine, it is recommended to use 80 g of salt per liter of water. Salting time for fish is approximately 12-16 hours. Various spices can be used as flavorings. Then the bream should be soaked in low-flow water for about half an hour, and then dried. This can be done by hanging the carcass in the wind. If the fish is large, it is recommended to insert spacers inside it to speed up the drying process. After drying the bream, you need to secure it in the smokehouse and start smoking the bream at home in accordance with the technology.

Hot smoking at home

Hot smoked bream cooks very quickly. This product is not only aromatic, but also very juicy and soft. It is important to know how to smoke hot smoked bream at home so as not to spoil the fish. The main difference of this method is that cooking occurs at a high temperature of -45-125°C. Hot smoked bream, whose calorie content is 172 kcal per 100 g of product, can be cooked for 40 - 120 minutes.

The preparation of fish is carried out in the same way as when performing cold smoking. But only in this case, pre-salting the fish for approximately 6 hours in a saline solution is more often used. To prepare it, take approximately 50 g of salt per liter of water. When dry salting, the recommended amount of salt is one teaspoon of salt per kilogram of fish. After drying the bream with a paper napkin, you can lubricate the carcass with liquid smoke and rub it with a little pepper, which will give the product a unique aroma and enhance its taste.

If you are interested in how to smoke hot smoked bream, you must first learn how to equip a smokehouse based on a barbecue. If you plan to smoke fish often, it is better to purchase a ready-made mini-smoker. You also need to stock up on special wood chips, which can be purchased in supermarkets today. When preparing sawdust yourself, you should take into account that the optimal wood is alder or aspen. You can also use wood from fruit trees, which will give smoked fish a special aroma.

Recipe for hot smoked bream in a mini smokehouse

Hot smoked bream, the recipe for which involves the use of a mini-smoker, is prepared very simply and quickly. For one smoking you will need a little sawdust, about half a glass. They need to be pre-soaked in water so that they do not burn, but give off a lot of hot smoke. Next, the following actions are performed:

• The prepared fish is laid out on a grill, which must first be lubricated with vegetable oil to prevent the product from burning;
• Chips are placed in an even layer on the bottom of the smokehouse;
• A baking tray is installed to drain the fat along with the grill on which the carcasses are laid out;
• The smokehouse is closed with a lid and placed on the grill, in which the fire is first lit.

It is important that the fire is high at the beginning of the cooking process, but as the product cooks, it should decrease. Hot smoked bream at home is prepared in this way in approximately a quarter of an hour. It is important not to over-expose the product, as otherwise it will acquire an ugly and unappetizing black tint. You can check its readiness by slightly opening the lid of the mini-smokehouse. Remove the smoker from the heat after the fish has acquired a beautiful golden hue.

Today, store shelves and supermarket shelves are full of all kinds of smoked products, including all kinds of fish, but for those who have tried to smoke products themselves, they cannot be compared with the tasty, aromatic, and most importantly, absolutely natural fish that you can cook at home. It won’t be difficult to smoke bream in a smokehouse, and the finished result will pleasantly surprise even the most obstinate gourmet. In addition, there is absolutely nothing complicated about how to properly smoke bream, and the only difficulty that may arise is in the construction of a home smokehouse (a description of the design and operating principle of this home-made device is described in detail on many online resources). In total, there are two ways to smoke bream at home: hot and cold, and both of them are very popular.

But regardless of the type of smoking, the fish must be prepared in a certain way, carefully gutting its belly, removing the gills, and, if desired, the head, because this is the place in the fish carcass that is most susceptible to rotting. An obligatory nuance, which in no case should be neglected, is making a deep longitudinal cut along the entire back of the bream, starting from the head and ending with its tail, because in its absence, there can be no question of complete salting. After this, the fish is rubbed with salt, paying special attention to its head, if there is one, placed in a sealable container of a suitable shape and left in the cold for at least 72 hours. After salting, the bream is washed under running water or even soaked for several hours so that all excess salt can be removed, wiped with a paper towel, a wooden spacer is placed in the abdominal part and hung in a draft.

As for the hot method of smoking bream, this will require fresh wood chips (one glass per procedure), which require preliminary thirty-minute soaking, because only then can that delicate aroma of the fish be ensured. The bottom of the smokehouse is filled with these sawdust, after which you can install a heat-resistant tray with high sides, designed to drain fish juice and fat, as well as a grate, on top of which bream carcasses prepared in the manner described above are placed. Then the smoked product is covered with a lid and the flame is lit, counting half an hour from the moment clouds of smoke emerge from under the lid. Bream can be considered ready when it is thoroughly golden, and in order to prevent its carcasses from falling apart during the smoking process, they can be pre-tied with a thin rope.

We take freshly caught bream, gut it and wash it thoroughly in running water. Then we put it in a pre-prepared fish container (basin, pan, etc.) and fill it with salt water (plentifully salted) and pepper to taste. You need to add enough water so that the fish barely disappears under the water and close the container with a lid. Then put it in a cool place for about one hour. During this time, the bream will take in as much salt as it needs.

There is no need to remove scales from fish, since they do not affect the salting process and during smoking gives it a natural appearance without falling apart or cracking (example with potatoes). After cooking, the skin and scales are removed very easily, without scattering the scales in different directions, as when cleaning fresh fish.

Next, we prepare the smokehouse for cooking the fish. The smokehouse should be made of stainless steel (preferably). At the bottom of the smokehouse we place pre-cut branches of an apple tree (or other fruit trees, which we have in abundance in our summer cottages). For hot smoking bream, I use fresh apple breams (just not dry ones!), cutting them into 10-15 cm pieces, approximately 8-10 mm in diameter in an amount of 12-15 pieces and placing them on the bottom of the smokehouse.

From food foil intended for baking, we make a small tray according to the size of the smokehouse and place it on apple tree branches so that the edges of the foil are in contact with the walls of the smokehouse, and, pressing with our hands, smooth them out. This is not difficult to do, since the foil is very soft.

This is all done so that when fat begins to drip from the fish during hot smoking, this fat does not fall on the branches and allows them to smolder better, which is why a foil tray is made (unless, of course, there is another tray intended for smoking ). If you think the haze won't be enough, it's not. Smoke will always find a hole. After smoking, the foil is collected into a ball and discarded.

So! We have prepared the smokehouse, now we take the grate on which we will place the fish. There should be at least two of them with different cells, because we catch different fish. In our case, we take a grate with a large mesh and lubricate it with oil. Then we take out the bream, which we have been salting for about an hour, rinse it with water and also grease it with sunflower oil (refined) on both sides, sprinkle with fish seasoning (the golden color during smoking will be just a sight for sore eyes)

For the best effect when hot smoking, we open the abdominal cavity of the bream slightly and insert across the abdomen a sprig from an apple tree, cut to the size of the fish’s abdomen (you can also put a tomato, bell pepper, potato, etc. there) - whatever you like, then put it on the grill .

The grate is placed in the smokehouse on the ledges on the sides. To ensure an even coating with a golden crust, the fish should not come into contact with each other or with the walls of the smokehouse, otherwise the place where it comes into contact with the wall may burn if the fire is too high. And we close it all with a lid.

Now we are all ready for hot smoking. We put the smokehouse on low heat for 25-35 minutes, depending on the size of the caught fish, and wait for it to cook. After the smoking period has expired, remove the bream from the smokehouse on the grill and let the fish cool. And then we start the meal. Among alcoholic drinks, hot smoked bream goes well with beer or dry wine.

And one last thing. If for some reason the fishing was unsuccessful and you were left without fish, you can buy it in the store and do the same thing. I will recommend you red sea bass; it’s a pity that it is not found in our lakes and rivers. Well, it's just very tasty!

Bon appetit!