Smoked eel is a real delicacy. Its fatty soft meat perfectly absorbs aromatic smoke and takes on a beautiful golden hue. Fatty acids in eel are unsaturated, proteins are complete, and vitamins are diverse. So the dish turns out to be not only tasty, but also healthy. You can smoke eel, depending on the capabilities of your smokehouse and your preferences, in whole or in separate pieces.
It is necessary
- - eel;
- - salt;
- - smokehouse;
- - wood.
Instructions
Step 1
If you get a live fish, you will have to kill it yourself. To do this, they take narrow and high containers, pour water there and release the fish. Then salt is poured, in the amount of 500 grams for every 5 kilograms of eels. After about an hour, the fish is already dead. There is no more humane way to kill eels, so if you are confused by this process, do not buy live fish.
Step 2
Rinse blackheads under running water and clean. Insert a sharp knife into the anus and make an incision down to the lower jaw of the fish, remove the insides. At a distance of about 7.5 centimeters from the tail, find the buds and also remove them. Take fine salt and clean the insides and surfaces with it, using it as an abrasive. It's good if you can replace it with clean white fine sand. Rinse the fish again.
Step 3
Prepare a brine from 1 kg of salt and 5-7 liters of water. Divide the blackheads by thickness. Soak large thick specimens in brine for 8 minutes, medium - 6, thin no more than 4 minutes. Remove the blackheads from the brine, rinse under running water and pat dry with paper towels. Air dry the fish or under a fan until the surface starts to shine.
Step 4
Prepare your smokehouse. Use oak or beech wood and sawdust from fruit trees. Light a wood fire in the firebox, adding pieces of wood from time to time. The smoking temperature of eel is 80 ° C. After you reach the desired temperature in the smoker, add only sawdust for a thick, even smoke.
Step 5
Prepare eels for smoking. If you have a tall smokehouse that allows you to hang the whole fish, skewer the carcasses below the head so that the fat drains from it to the tail. Place the eel in a smokehouse, cover it with a damp burlap and smoke the fish from 1 hour to 1.5 hours, depending on the length and thickness of the carcasses.
Step 6
If you want to smoke fish on a grill over a barbecue or over a wok filled with fragrant sawdust, cut and skin them. You can remove the skin first and then cut the eel. The skin from this fish is removed with a "stocking", cutting off the head and hanging the fish with its tail down. Acne without skin will turn out to be less oily.
