Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast

After setting up our filing cabinet smoker and the success of the smoked pork I decided to try smoking some oily fish.

Filing cabinet smoker in action

We definitely need to get some thermometers to check the temperature of the drawers, but in the meantime I bought some trout to hot smoke and some herring to make kippers.

It was a cool and drizzly day, so perfect for keeping the temperature down. I lit a fire in the bottom drawer, making sure any softwood kindling I used to start the fire had burnt out as they contain a high proportion of resin that may taint the food. There is a lot of information online about which hardwoods to use, but we have some apple from our garden, some miscellaneous hardwood for our wood stove and a bag of beech chippings, so that's what I used. I'm not sure we're good enough connoisseurs to be able to differentiate between different woods, but who knows? Maybe one day!

Once the fire was going I added some beech chippings, pushed the drawer in and waited to check it was coming out of the vent hole at the top.

Smouldering fire and beech chippings

The herrings I had gutted and left the head on,  opening up by laying them belly side down and pushing on the back bone. I removed the spine from one of them, which proved to be a mistake as it fell apart whilst smoking.

The trout I gutted, de-headed and opened in the same way, deboning at the same time. It might have been better to leave head and spine in but I was aware that the fish were longer than the drawers were deep. I need to experiment with hanging or procure some grills to fit in the hanging slots of the drawers. I rubbed some salt onto the flesh of each fish- only enough to season, I'm not aiming for long term preservation.

Herrings on their way to being kippers

Incidentally, chickens love the trimmed heads and innards, if you live in a country where that's permitted. Otherwise a wormery or bokashi bin is a good place to put them rather than a compost heap.

I put the trout in the drawer above the fire and the herring in the top drawer where it should be cooler, hanging the fish on S hooks from my wooden branch hangers, and checked the fire periodically. It was much easier to keep it smouldering with the extra air holes we drilled in the side of the cabinet by the fire drawer.

After a few hours of smoking (four maybe?) I decided the trout were done and removed them and opened the top drawer a little bit to keep the herring cooler, though it didn't seem very warm in the drawer. They smoked for another couple of hours. The boned fish had fallen off the hook but the spines were keeping the other fish in place, so that's something to remember.

Kippers

Smoked trout

I refrigerated all the fish overnight to allow the flavour to settle.
The kippers I fried in a bit of butter and we ate them for Sunday breakfast- absolutely delicious! Smoky enough, not too salty; really good.

Kippers for breakfast

The trout should in theory be edible cold as they were hot smoked (and I did try a little bit to see how smoky it was) but I don't know how hot they got whilst smoking. They were destined for a quiche though, so were going to be cooked in that anyway.

Smoked trout quiche with chives, perennial onions and salad burnet

Quiche for dinner and a few mini quiches for lunches with the leftovers.