Smoked eel at home

4 servings
3 hours 30 min

How to smoke the eel of hot smoking at home? Prepare the necessary products. We will need first of all fresh eel, water and salt. For smoking, it is better to use unfrozen fish, so the result and taste of the finished delicacy will be many times better.

If the fish is still alive, place it in a strong salt solution and leave it for a while. When the eel stops moving, remove it from the liquid and remove the mucus from the surface of the carcasses. It is very important to remove all mucus, otherwise the final taste may turn out to be different.

Remove all insides by making an incision on the abdomen. Leave the heads and tails, so the ready-made fish will look more appetizing. Prepare the marinade, for this dissolve salt in water at a rate of 5 to 1. I. e. take 1 kilogram of table salt for 5-6 liters of cold water. Place the eel in the marinade and leave for 20-30 minutes. Next, remove the carcasses from salt water and wipe with napkins.

Hang the fish using a tourniquet or thick string outdoors. It is good if the drying process occurs in a small draft or in the wind. Leave this way for an hour or a little more. If insects are present on the street, then it is better to dry the eel in a net.

Prepare the smoking machine. His preparation depends on the model. In the recipe, the eel smoked in the apparatus & quot; Steam locomotive & quot;, I lined the foil to the bottom, and installed a grill over it.

Next, ignite the fire in a special firewood compartment. Wait for the temperature in the smokehouse to rise to 80-90 degrees, put pre-soaked chips from fruit trees on the embers in a thin layer, do not use a chip from coniferous trees, they can give bitterness to the finished fish.

Place the eel on the grill at some distance from each other so that the smoke evenly envelops each carcass. You can make spacers in the belly of the fish, I did not do this since I had a small eel.

Cover the machine and smoke for 1-1. 5 hours (depending on the size of the fish and the model of the smoking machine).

The finished fish takes on a beautiful brown and gold hue, the meat turning white and fragrant. Remove the eel from the device, cool and let it brew for a while.