Smoked Teriyaki Kokanee Salmon Recipe

Smoked salmon is one of my all time favorite foods. Before I had a smoker, grilled salmon used to be my favorite. I’m here to tell you that smoked salmon is as far ahead of grilled salmon, as grilled salmon is above baked salmon. It’s incredible. I catch a lot of salmon and I eat a lot of salmon (lets be honest- I run a website all about kokanee salmon, so its kind of my thing). I’ve tried smoked salmon a lot of different ways- sweet and savory, hot and cold, spicy and mild. This is my absolute favorite recipe for smoked kokanee salmon- teriyaki style.

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Brining Vs Marinating

Brining is when you soak your meat or fish in a salt and sugar water mixture to add more flavor, help the meat be more moist, and it also starts to change the meat’s texture. A marinade does some similar things, though it also adds additional flavors and spices. Additionally, a brine has a much higher salt content, so you’d want to rinse the brine off of the salmon before you cook or smoke it, the marinade is left in place. Our teriyaki smoked salmon recipe uses a marinade, not a brine, so please do not rinse it off before cooking.

If you marinade in a vacuum sealed bag you can cut the marinade recipe in half or double your salmon. We love marinating any meat in a vacuum sealed bag. When you pull all the air out, we find that it helps pull the liquid into the meat. It also helps the liquid to come in contact with all parts of the meat or salmon, even if you have a smaller amount of marinade. By vacuum sealing it you can use less marinade and get a better result. We like the

Vacuum Sealer From Mueller Living

Smoking Temperature for Teriyaki Smoked Kokanee Salmon

Salmon is safe to eat once it reaches an internal temperature of 145 (though sushi eaters will point out that this isn’t always necessary). Smoking at different temperatures to reach that 145 mark can get you different results. How you like your smoked salmon can help you determine what temperature to smoke it at. If you like a more dried, jerky type texture, we recommend smoking at 180 until the temperature reaches at least 145, like we recommend for our kokanee candy recipe. If you like more of a grilled salmon, we recommend at hot smoke at 300-325. For this recipe we like it somewhere in the middle- and our recommended temperature for teriyaki smoked kokanee salmon is 225-250.

Wood for Smoking Salmon

We always recommend that you smoke fish with fruit wood, like apple or cherry. This isn’t to say that other woods aren’t as good, but other woods add different flavors. If you’re using a pellet smoker though a competition blend works well. If I’m doing a small batch of kokanee salmon on the pellet smoker after a quick day out on the lake, I don’t usually switch wood or pellets.