Smoking & Preserving 35 Alaskan Sockeye Salmon

Good morning everyone. We are going to be processing some fish today. Eric and I just got back from a trip to the Kenai and we were fortunate enough to get our whole household limit of 35 sockeye salmon. So going down there that long drive and all that fishing was just half of the battle. Now we need to fillet all these fish. We're going to be smoking them, we're going to be canning them, we're going to be freezing some, we're going to be making some dog food out of some. It's probably going to take us about two days to do all of that so we are going to get started processing them. So that is why they call this red salmon and this is one of the more sought-after fishes here in Alaska and you might notice that the tail looks a little weird and that's because you need to clip these off when you're dip netting here in Alaska. This was a male that I just got these two nice fillets off of and you can tell there's still a lot of meat on here that we're going to use. Ariel's going to come in and as I'm filleting these she's going to be using a spoon and she'll kind of scrape along the bones and up on the collar here and she'll get a little more of the meat out for me. And then this is going to go into a bucket and we're going to turn this into dog food. So you can tell that this one is a female salmon and you can see the nice salmon eggs in there and we're going to be saving just some of this because there's only so much eggs you can eat when you have 35 salmon. After I scrape the carcass and get some extra meat off we're just putting them aside and ice. What we're going to do is be cooking them down for the dogs. Normally I'd like to feed them raw food but these sometimes come with quite a few worms in them and I don't want to directly feed the worms to the dogs even though we do naturally deworm them on occasion. I just prefer not to feed them worms if I can see them. So for mine and Eric's consumption if we cook the meat the worms don't live through that and if we were to freeze it for about two weeks for our dogs they actually won't live through that either so we have that option too if we want to save some of them frozen for the dogs. It's actually as if I'm scooping ice cream. Salmon flavored. All right we are on fish number 35 the last one. As soon as I get this one done our next step is going to be cutting down some alder and we're going to get the smoker fired up and we're salmon on the smoker. We are going to be smoking it today for two reasons. It gives us a really nice flavor on the salmon and then when we go to can it it's also going to give us a firmer fish. We're not going to be brining it this time around. We have in the past brining. In our opinion it does probably give it a little bit better of a flavor but it does use a lot of salt and a lot of sugar so we're going to opt out of it this time. We're going to get these on the grill and we're going to fire up the smoker. All right guys while that meat is smoking we went ahead and made some lunch. We made some salmon burgers on some bread with a little bit of veggies on the side. We're going to eat lunch and then we are going to go over and show you the net we used to actually catch all these fish. All right so this is what we use to catch all those fish and this is called a dip net and this is just a big net. This one's five feet tall. This is just one style of dip net. There are other kinds and we actually have another kind for a different river. There's several different places that you can dip net in Alaska and it is definitely something only residents can do. So we didn't get to do it last year but we're really excited to do it this year. We were able to get a good amount of sockeye salmon which is one of our favorites because it does tend to be you know a little more flavorful. It has more oils in it and like Ariel said there's different configurations of nets that you can use and the poles that we used on these. We have about 16 feet of poles to get this thing out in the water and people use poles like as long as 40 feet. So it may seem like a really easy way to fish and it's definitely easier than using a rod and reel but it's it's still a lot of hard work getting out there and standing in the water for hours upon end. Yeah it definitely usually takes a few days to catch your limit if not longer depending upon the run and the water and all that. But we were lucky enough to go fishing at a pretty good time. We caught all 35 of our fish in just under eight hours. We're gonna get back to work. We're gonna go get the vacuum sealer out and we're gonna be putting some of those fillets in the freezer. You just want one of these in the bag? You can take it. Yeah. Okay guys our first batch of salmon is done smoking. I think it went for about two and a half hours and we're using alder wood. I'm gonna pull these off and we're gonna keep them cold until we are ready to pressure can them and I think this is going to take about three batches total. So it's turned out great as you can see and this white stuff that's the fat coming out of the fish. All right I thought this was going to be three batches but I got one more down in there so it's going to fit in two. It's just going to be a little crowded. All right guys I'm stirring up our dog's food that we're cooking. We like to call it their chum. It is all of the salmon carcasses and the little bits and pieces that we didn't use with some water and we've just cooked this down for a couple hours and it's almost done but what is done is our meat. We're done smoking meat for the day. We're gonna pull that off and we're gonna get it in the freezer with the other meat and then we're gonna go inside and cook some dinner. All right guys we are eating dinner. We made a chowder type soup with salmon and a whole bunch of veggies and some celery stalk and moose broth right? Moose bone broth yeah you have what fennel in there? Yeah broccoli and cauliflower and then we just got some like pull apart bread we made earlier. And then we put the smoked salmon in there. So tomorrow we're gonna pick back up with canning the fish and we're all done for the night. That's really good. It's really really good. The fennel in there, this is the way to eat fennel. The actual liquid of the soup is quite good. All right so it has been a few days and we have finished pressure canning all of our salmon. We ended up with 40 jars which is awesome. I've got them all cleaned and labeled. Eric and I you know this seems probably like a lot of salmon but we go through quite a bit of salmon. It's for all year for us for all winter. Last year I believe we went through 120 cans of salmon so we still need quite a bit more. And we did freeze quite a bit of fillets but we really only like those fresh. After about a month they start to get a little funky taste in our opinion so that is why we resorted to smoking them and canning them. We're gonna head outside and eat dinner now. All right guys we're getting the fire started for dinner. On the menu tonight we're having some salmon, we're having some fresh grilled veggies and we're gonna be making some garlic bread. Just pulling some of the bones out of this one fillet. I had a few left in there and I'm gonna fillet the skin off of these. We're gonna cook the meat and at the end we're gonna actually fry up the skin. It's delicious. It's like the best part of the fish. You'll you'll see when we're done. All right guys all we're putting on these is some salt and pepper and we're gonna be cooking them in some coconut oil. For the garlic bread it's super easy. We're just using a loaf that Ariel made and we're gonna cut lines this way, flip it and do them that way and we're basically gonna stuff it with some olive oil, some garlic and some fresh parsley. All right salmon's almost done and these are some garlic scapes I'm gonna throw in there. All right salmon's done. Veggies are going on the grill. So what we're cooking here is some garlic scapes and what a garlic scape is is a flower that the garlic plant puts off. So we cut some of these off. They taste pretty much just like really good garlic and we also have some broccoli, swiss chard, green onion, yellow zucchini in there. All right guys now for the star of the meal. I just cooked up the parsley and the garlic in here and I had some olive oil. Now we're gonna fry up these salmon skins. So if you've never tried the salmon skins before I suggest you try it. We've only been doing it for a while but it's so good. The skin still has the scales on it and everything you can fry it up in any type of oil you have. We're using coconut oil and olive oil. You can also do butter but just cook it until it's crisp almost like a cracker and it's delicious. It goes great with salmon. All right I'm finishing off our fish and our veggies with a little bit of this dressing that Ariel made. I gotta try some of this skin. It's really really good. I definitely recommend you try this. It's almost like a pork rind. Not fishy at all. Delicious. You gotta try this. Anyways that's it for this video. This fish is a lot of hard work to get. It's a lot of hard work to process it and we are definitely gonna enjoy this meal tonight. We'll see you guys next time. The dill. Oh thank you. The dill is so flavorful. Try this. I already ate my skin. Oh I was gonna give you a cheers.