Secrets of the Smoke House—Part 2—Smoking Fish
Smoked Sturgeon, smoked mullet, shad, eels, mackerel, smoked black bass, smoked trout . . . all were standard fare in the South before WW2. The Sturgeon is now endangered, so must be farmed, but the process is straightforward.
Because the smoking of fish was often done by businesses or cooperative processing plants maintained by fishermen, scale and speed were the requisites of the smoked fish business. The fuel had to be cheap and readily available. Smoking meat by burning corn cobs or the sawdust collected from hardwood saw mills was pioneered in the mid-19th century to prepare sturgeon. In Vol 4 of the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission we read: “the usual way of preparing sturgeon for market is by smoking. Strips an inch or two thick are put through a pickling process, then hung on hooks over slow fire of corncobs or sawdust of hardwood. After thus smoking for a single night they are ready to be shipped to any part of the country” ((p 347).
It should be noted that sawdust from pine mills was not used. The resinous, sticky smoke from pine did not marry well with the taste of cured fish. Given the fact that many of the coastal sawmills in GA, SC, and NC primarily processed pines, getting hardwood sawdust was a challenge.
In northern countries there was a method of smoking sturgeon in its own fat using a constricted space oven and letting the sturgeon slowly render itself. The smoke from the oil hitting the embers below would perfume the fish’s flesh. 100 lbs of meat were smoked at a time. Eels were handled similarly. But this was not a scalable method, because heat control is lost by expanding the over space. It was not followed in the South.
Because the fish have better integrity when hanging if the skin is left on, most fishes are split or slit, skin on, bones in. (Once smoked, fish bones separate out easily.) There is usually a quick brining of the fish—I cup salt to one gallon water—1 hour immersion. Home smokers often go the hot smoking route, putting water soaked hickory chips on charcoal briquettes and slathering the fish sides with olive oil. Cold smoking fish in a smoke house can bypass the oil, unless one is smoking a very lean white fish. The internal temp of a smokehouse for cold smoking should not exceed 100 degrees f. (80 degrees is optimum, but difficult to maintain in the summer South). Exposure to smoke takes place over a protracted period of time—lasting weeks, depending on the fish. Racks made out of lathe or bamboo or dowels should expose the array of fish in a dense cloud of warm, but not hot, smoke.
Mullet smoking took a day, and late in that day the fish are brushed with a pepper oil sauce. There was a sad moment in the 1960s and 70s when the Florida smoked mullet houses took to brushing liquid smoke on the fillets. There is a special cavern in hell reserved for the Florida perpetrators where devils baste their carcasses with Colgin’s “natural hickory” Liquid Smoke while they turn on spits above a furnace.
Now the tricks: “Rotten birch is the best fuel to use for smoking fish because it smoulders steadily with a thin volume of smoke and will not impart an unpleasant flavor to the fish.”
“Smoking shark. You’ve not tasted nothin’ till you’ve eaten smoked shark. Not smoked too much! Steaks an inch thick. Now some down near Brunswick quick smoke it. That’s almost like cookin’ it. I like the taste better cold smoked. Oak chips and salt marsh hay over corn cob coals. More moister! That’s the old old island cookin.”