Well to start off, even though I had a "lesser than" cook last night, the meal was not so bad. Our company enjoyed a Sherman Oaks California dinner, under the night sky.
I've had nothing but ummmazing success with fish cooks in my AmeriQue. Last night was the first disappointing experience. I've probed thick fish fillets to an internal 140º, and cooked at 200º. The outcome has always been sweet and smoky fish, moist and flavorful beyond compare. The cooks have usually taken about an hour and a half minutes, to an hour and 45 minutes.
Last night I tried a very large farm raised Salmon fillet from Costco. I probed as always, and I smoked over Apple wood. I noticed during my cook, that there was no smoke emanating. And when over 2 hours had gone by, with the probe reading only 133º, I thought something was "fishy". I decided to check the Salmon, and it was way past done. Today when I cleaned up the AmeriQue, I noticed that the wood had never burned. It had only gotten a little blackish.
My guesses are as follows:
Perhaps I probed the fish in an area where there was less density, which could explain why the internal temp wasn't accurately measured.
As for the wood not smoldering, I'm kind of perplexed. I actually weighed my chunk of Cookshack Apple wood, and it was 2.65 oz. Could this wood chunk have been too large to burn at a 200º cook? Could the wood have been moister than normal? I store all of my wood in our indoor kitchen pantry, but maybe I should have let the chunk dry out in the sun during the day---or maybe I should have cut the chunk into 2 smaller pieces.
Anyway, just sharing the experience, and wondering if anyone might have some advice or theory of what happened.
Thanks for reading,
Jeff
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