We just got our new Smokette and are trying to learn how to smoke some salmon. For the past 20 years we've used my husband's homemade smoker from high school. Basically an electric burner in the bottom of an insulated box (similar to a Smokey Joe). Smoking around 5 lbs of salmon in his old smoker took about 10 hours, and had a great flavor/texture. (simple overnight brine of salt, sugar and water). With our Smokette the salmon is getting done a lot faster (150 degrees, about 2 hours), and instead of having the 'smoked salmon' texture/flavor, it has more of a cooked salmon with smoke flavor. What are we doing wrong? Should we lower the temp way down? Thanks, Cindy

Hi! A couple of weeks ago I smoked a smaller (2 3/4lb) salmon fillet that I bought from Costco. I too am new to smoking but I had fantastic results because of the posts in this forum and the wealth of knowledge that the other forum members have and their willingness to share. For what it's worth, here's my advice:
-check out the archives and look for posts from a lady in Alaska named Andi...she's the Queen of smoked salmon and shares both her dry brine and wet brine recipes along with "how to". The other great source is Smokin Okie...check out his 101. On some of the threads the dialog between the two of them is REALLY informative! When I did my salmon I also did 5 whole rainbow trout. I viewed it as an experiment because I had not smoked fish before. Here's what I did:
-for the salmon I used Andi's dry brine recipe for 6 hours & for the trout I used her wet brine recipe for 4 hours.
-After dry brining the salmon and rinsing it THOROUGHLY it took about 4 1/2 hrs for the pelicle to form (very important!). I brushed the salmon lightly with maple syrup half way through the drying process. Then it was simple...I put the fish in the smoker on two racks with the trout below the salmon, used 2 ounces of hickory and set the temp at 150 degrees. Smoked the salmon for 3 1/2 hours and the trout for 6 1/2 hours ( they were whole trout ). The end result? PERFECT....hope this helps.
Bill

Hi Cindy, Welcome!

Warm/Cold/Hot smoking are all different techniques, and thanks Chateau for the quick help.

I'm sure some more tips are on the way, we've got a great forum group here.

As you're still new, go ahead and do a search for "salmon" by clicking on the search button. You'll need to explore the drop down windows, but you might try a search in the "seafood" forum.

From what I can guess, but you're old smoker was more likely doing a warm/cold smoke. You're doing a hot smoke in a smokette. The difference is the temp, it's hard to keep the smokette below 150 by leaving it on. You can cycle it on and off, but it's a pretty specific process to do that.

There's a number of recipes out there like Andi's so hopefully those will help.

Do a little reading and maybe you'll see some good ideas.

See?...this is why this forum is so great! Newbie or not, you're never alone here.
Bill

You might try measuring the air temperature in the homemade smoker just to know how it worked. It also probably moved a lot more air thru and thus did more dehydrating than the CookShack.