I smoked my first Goldeye

Yesterday I caught 4 Goldeye in Lockport. I scaled them, gutted them, washed them and put them into the fridge. In the evening I put them into brine and left them overnight in the refrigerator. Some people say that it is best to freeze them for a few months before smoking them. Apparently, it makes the meat firmer and pulls out the oil, but I wanted to try out smoking them before I spent money on a smoker. 

In the morning I soaked roasted oak chips in water for 2 hours. The oak chips come from wine kits. They always include a small bag of oak chips, but I never use them. I’ve saved them over the years.

I took the 4 Goldeye out of the fridge, took them out of the brine, rinsed them, dried them with a paper towel, put them on a rack and left them for about 1 ½ hour in the basement to dry and to glaze over (so they can absorb the smoke but retain moisture).

Then I prepared my 2-burner gas barbeque for the smoking:

1)     I removed the rack from one side. Then I put more briquettes on the side without the rack. I took the oak chips out of the water, squeezed them dry and wrapped them with tinfoil. I punched holes into the top for the smoke to escape; then I put the package with the chips on top of the briquettes.

2)     I lit the burner, using only one. I left it on high with the lid open until the oak chips started smoking a bit. Then I put the fish onto the warming rack on the unlit side.

3)     I turned the gas control knob to its lowest setting. The temperature crept to about 275 F. Then I shut off the burner and let the temperature inside the barbeque cool down to about 180 F. Then I lit the burner again.

4)     After 2 ½ hours I shut off the burner and let the barbeque cool down with the fish still inside.

5)     The barbeque was cool after 1 hour. I used a spatula to loosen the fish from the grill. Some of the skin stayed behind, but that’s okay. We don’t eat the skin anyway. The meat looked good and the fish had a pleasant smoky aroma. We put the fish onto a baking sheet and put them into the fridge.

The problem was to keep the temperature from going above 275 F. Once I had, by mistake, 2 burners going on low for about 10 minutes and the temperature rose to nearly 400 F until I noticed it. Not good.

It was a tedious job. I left the burner on for about 5 minutes, then shut if off for about 10 minutes, and then I lit it again. This I did for the entire 2 ½ hours.

Note: I will buy a smoker. It will make life so much easier. This is actually the first time I smoked anything and I wanted to try it out. I searched the internet for advice and for recipes. I found plenty of both, but nobody advises you how to tell when the fish are done. I cut into the skin of one fish after 2 ½ hours and it separated easily from the flesh, so I figured it was done.

Here is the recipe I used:

1 liter of water

¼ cup pickling salt

¼ plus cup of brown sugar

½ cup of apple juice

¼ cup soy sauce

½ tsp. black pepper

¼ tsp. onion powder

¼ tsp. garlic powder

A few splashes of Worcestershire sauce

Evaluation:

We had them for supper. They were not great but edible. The taste was okay, but the meat was still quite soft. Maybe I should have smoked them longer. I think if they would have been smoked in a smoker and not my barbeque they would have been better. The way I did it wasn’t really the way to smoke them, because there was no consistent supply of smoke. Actually, there was probably not much smoke at all, because the oak chips were not even charred. I can use them again. I think I’ll wait until I have a real smoker before I smoke goldeye again. I will use the same recipe.