Smoking salmon on the way to Bjuröklubb, 23 June 2019

Bjuröklubb (64.462583, 21.571655) is 40 miles north of Ratan. It is a bay sheltered from southern winds and equipped with a SXK buoy. There is a small harbour, but clearly not suitable for a boat like Belisama.

On the way to Bjuröklubb, we decided to test the new smoker bought in Clas Ohlson in Umeå with some fresh salmon from there as well...

Here is the kinetic smoker on sales in Class Ohlson for 299 KR (30€). The bottom part hosts two alcohol burners used to generate the smoke. The smoking room can accommodate wood dust under a metallic plate. Then, there are two grids to lay down the stuff to smoke, on top of which a lid where you can regulate the air flow. Straight forward...

The smoker...

For five euros, you can get half a kilo of appropriate wood dust, enough to smoke couple of kilos of fish or other meats.

Then, you are all set. But smoking requires preparation, and this is where the nice journey north towards Bjuröklubb fits... First, you need good weather.

Then, you need a crew to prepare the brine for the salmon prior to the smoking. The brine consists of salt flakes poured generously on the salmon, as well as a bit of cassonade (raw sugar). Pack in a food plastic bag (Ikea-grade) and placed under some weight for a few hours in order to get some of the water out.

Pouring the brine in the salmon bag...

Ensuring the brine covers the whole salmon piece before placing under a weight.

Once arrived at your destination, (I would not advice smoking fish while sailing...), rinse thoroughly the salmon to get the brine out and pad dry the piece of salmon. Then, lay it down in the smoker after having placed the wood dust in the compartment under and seasoned with a bit of pepper.

Cover and light-up the alcohol burners. Smoke will soon start to appear through the regulator hole in the lid. I placed there a small meat thermometer to control the smoking temperature.

And here, there are two schools of thoughts: cold smoking versus hot smoking... With the Clas Ohlson smoker, you can basically do hot smoking. My advice after the first run is to reduce the burner as soon as the temperature reaches 60+° C to avoid overcooking the salmon. This will be achieved in 7 to 10 minutes. Then, let it get smoked for 20 minutes in total, and look at it...

Just nicely done, tasting fantastiskt!

The difference between cold smoking and hot smoking is how the albumin, naturally present in salmon meat will become. Albumin is basically the protein that's make the white of the eggs. At more than 40° C, it coagulates and becomes whitish, like in a cooked egg. Cold smoking will prevent the albumin from coagulating, keeping the smoked salmon in a very moist and tender texture. Smoking over 40° C, as in our practice above, will coagulate the albumin, resulting in a drier piece of smoked salmon which includes a bit of white coagulated albumine, all testing very good.

The secret of cold smoking is to separate the production of the smoke by the burner from the exposure of smoke to the fish by a pipe of several metres so that the smoke gets cold on its way. This is barely feasible with such a primitive on board smoker.

I will show you in a future post the various types of smokers as I have started documenting them as we go along all these islands.

So what about Bjuröklubb? Here we are at the SXK buoy.

Belisama at the SXK buoy.

Along the coast, finding additional water marks from the XIX century, with the coast guard boat in background

One of the large buoys used during WWI when the Swedish navy took refuge here. 

Our coast guard neighbour  

Inspiring views...

The lighthouse was built in 1859, Adeline was manned until 1970.

The station in Bjurköklubb.

Going around the island, we were so surprised to see that the lilly of the valley was just blossoming now, more than a month later than in the Stockholm archipelago. But no surprises, as we are a thousand kilometre north of the Stockholm archipelago!