Quote Originally Posted by Justin View Post
Yeah, I've seen the various different setups; the pellet tubes seem to be very reasonably priced; any idea how well they work?

When you smoked the salmon, did you do the whole process where you pack it in sugar and leave it in the fridge for a day or so beforehand?

Traeger has a video on Youtube that shows the cheese smoking method you describe, and I'm glad to hear that it works well.

Also, what about smoking vegetables? Last time I went over to a buddy's house, after we were done smoking turkey, I threw some olive oil-covered garlic cloves on the smoker just to see what would happen, and they turned out incredible. Did I get lucky, or is smoking vegetables a fairly straightforward thing?

I skin the filet that place it in a plastic container. add kosher salt and white sugar in about equal parts. The salt will draw moisture out of the meat and will dissolve both the salt and sugar. The muscle fibers will then draw the mixture back into the meat. I do it for about six hours. Any longer and it gets too salty for me, but I don't cook with a lot of salt so I find a little to be a lot.

This is called a dry brine. It works great on chicken as well but I only do it for a couple hours before grilling.

The most important step with salmon is to then rinse it and pat it dry. Then let it sit uncovered for a few hours. This forms a sticky film called a pellicle which does two things. It hold the albumen in, which is the white protein that you see when you grill salmon. It is also a nice sticky surface for the smoke particles to adhere to.

I love grilled veggies especially asparagus. A little oil and some jerk seasoning, toss them on the grill until the ends are crispy and pull 'em. I don't smoke them since I prefer them al dente and leaving them in the smoker long enough to get smoky usually overcooks them. But every grill and smoker, and palette is different. But you are right, smoked garlic is awesome, as is smoked salt.

My two go-to sites for smoking and grilling info. The first one has great insight about how smoke and food work together and why a lot of the techniques you will encounter are nonsense. The second has a lot of great recipes.

https://amazingribs.com/
https://www.smoking-meat.com/