Salmon Love
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| Harrison Bay |
The gift was an unusual one by anyone’s standards. Our setnet season was wrapping-up and several of our customers were picking up coolers of fresh-caught Cook Inlet salmon. We have been direct-marketing our salmon for the last twenty years and manage to sell our entire catch to locals out of our driveway.
“Here you go, give these a try”. I overheard our neighbor Richard who was picking up an order of fish and had given us, what would turn out to be, a real treat. Tamra thanked him,set the bag down on the table, and got back to work.
I was busy sliding fish out of the boat into a fish tote filled with ice, Tamra was hustling around weighing fish, calculating totals and answering phone calls. My Mom and Dad were scrubbing coolers and shuffling fish into coolers. Hazelee, my daughter was busy icing fish and helping wherever needed.
It wasn’t until later that we would discover what Richard had brought us; Loosely contained in a plastic grocery bag were the carcasses of two sockeye salmon. Upon further inspection the carcasses were darkened, dried and smoked!
A few years ago I posted a youtube video entitled “How to filet a salmon”. In the video I point-out that no filet job is perfect. It doesn’t matter how precise your cutting technique is, there is always a small amount of meat left along the spine, tail, or ribs. My suggestion, in the video, is to scrape the excess meat off of the bone with a tablespoon (great for salmon patties).
Smoking the carcass; What a great Idea! I was blown away. “Why hadn’t I thought of this?”, I wondered.
I took one of the smoked carcasses and peeled a small strip from along the ribs. The dark red meat had to be pulled and tugged from the bone and was the texture of jerky. The smoky sweet flavor was wonderful! We passed around the dried carcass until it was nothing but bones and fins. “I gotta try this”, I thought. |
| I tried it. |
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| Six smoked carcasses. |
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