Canadian Salmon - Catch & Cook

Hey guys it's Matt with Meat Church and welcome back to my outdoor kitchen. Today let's cook some fresh caught Canadian salmon. Well back before the summer my buddy Tuffy Stone called me and asked me what I was doing. Early in September he was referring me to the West Coast Fishing Club who graciously invited myself and my wife to far northwest Canada off the mainland in Haida Gwa, basically Alaska, for an amazing bucket list fishing trip. I had to go cook for some guests and had the good fortune of fishing in what felt like an untouched part of the world. I mean the scenery was amazing but we flew to Vancouver. We had to private charter almost two hours and then from there we helicoptered in about 20 minutes to super remote area. I mean scenery wise I saw killer whales. I caught a rock fish and saved it and fed it to a bald eagle which honestly is the first time I've seen a bald eagle outside of a zoo. You know like I said the fishing was nuts. I caught huge chinook which Americans call them kings. Caught a bunch of coho which you would know as silvers. Caught halibut. Caught lean cod. Halibut video definitely coming for you guys but I couldn't wait to get back and to cook this for you guys because you know I'm a big outdoors guy and I was taught anything you take in the wild you're going to consume 100% of it and I had a pretty great week of fishing with my wife so I came home with a ton of fish. So today I thought what I would do for you is jump right into salmon. This is actually coho or silver and it's actually one my wife caught ironically but I'm going to show you how big some of these are. This was you know basically almost 30 pound chinook or king that I caught that put up a super memorable fight and this just came straight from Canada. It was you have to freeze it to get it back over the border but I can't say enough good things about the West Coast Fishing Club. What a trip they took first class care of us. I highly recommend that for anybody but let's jump in. I recently did some pork tenderloin three ways a real easy what I call weeknight grilling video and there was tons of comments about please more easy stuff like this. We have other salmon videos on our channel recipes on our website we're going to change it up. Last week we launched our new rub Texas sugar it's amazing on seafood it's a sweet heat got a little cumin in it a couple different peppers it's great on seafood so that's what we're going to use today. I worked with Blaine who is the executive chef at the lodge at the clubhouse for the West Coast Fishing Club and while I was there I said how would you cook it just to hear something different and we're going to use Blaine's technique today. If you like the skin on which this is still skin on we're going to sear it and then we're going to poach it in butter and it's going to be delicious. Let's go ahead and get it seasoned and I'm going to go kind of light fish is delicate I don't think it needs a whole heck of a lot but do whatever you like and honestly season whatever you like. Some of you might just like salt and pepper but I'm here to show you new ways to use this seasoning. I've cooked this twice since I've been back and it's great. We're going to let this sit here just a few minutes I'm going to get 15 minutes. Today we're cooking on a Traeger Timberline XL works out great because it's got an induction burner we're going to sear the fish and then we're going to poach it inside. This lesson could be done in your house cooking inside is no fun though you could sear it in a skillet and then you could throw it you know you could you could poach it on top as well in a pan with butter but we do everything outside so I'm going to come over to the induction burner turn it on melt some butter we're going to put a little bit of stuff in the butter that we're going to poach in so I'll see you guys over here. All right I'm going to melt some butter down here I've just got the induction on medium heat and I'm going to saute some shallots and garlic to go in the butter that we're going to poach with. All right so we just cook those like I said till they're nice and translucent it smells amazing so let's add some more butter that we're going to need for poaching. So this is a super easy way to cook fish but yet makes it what I'm going to say somewhat sophisticated in taste. You could just poach in butter but I'm amping up the flavor profile with what we've put in it I've got some chives a little bit of lemon juice so we're going to melt this down and I'm going to get my pan ready for the sear. All right I've got the induction on a seven which is like medium high heat and I've sprayed it with avocado oil which has a high smoke point. I'm going to sear this skin here for about two minutes and this coho salmon has a beautiful deep red color it's going to be awesome. All right it's been exactly two minutes. All right let's get in here where the butter is it's nice and melted down I'm going to add some chives to this stir it up now I did the entire stick of butter I did not clarify butter and talking with Blaine he encouraged me to go full butter keep the milk fat to catch the smoke. So we're going to slip this salmon in that beautiful char and the goal here is to have the butter all the way up the fish that's pretty perfect. Now I'm running a Traeger at 300 with alder pellets wood is an ingredient it's a nice light complement to this fish but it doesn't matter all that much because we're only going to be in here about 10 minutes it's in butter anyway so you know doesn't really matter too much so I'll keep temping this we're going to 120 and it's gonna be time to eat. All right well that's good we're at 120 it's actually been about 15 minutes the last time I cooked this I did it on the bottom shelf the butter was obviously a little warmer and protect that crispy skin look at that it's not gonna suck I'll tell you that all right I'm gonna get it out of this butter so it does not continue to cook and we're gonna let it cool off here and when we come back I'm gonna have a plate built for you guys and we're gonna taste it and see how we did. I mean this looks and smells amazing please don't judge me for all this green stuff on here but we've put this on some wild rice I'll put a little bit of a little bit of lemon on it and I'm jumping in you can see the shallots on there I can't tell you how good this smells here we go huge bite so good anything you catch in the wild tastes 500 times better and I like the skin so I choose to uh to crisp it up when we seared it if you don't want to eat the skin or maybe you're cooking skinless fish uh you certainly don't have to do that but man this is so good for you uh you know subtle Texas sugar because I really want to taste the fish uh cooked in all that butter it's rich it's good that was so simple I mean it's like a 20 minute supper um that you know my family would definitely enjoy and it just brings back all the memories of that trip and all the scenery and stuff like that so shout out to the West Coast Fishing Club for having me and shout out Tuffy thanks for uh thanks for hollering at me and and referring me we'll put this uh in in the playlist for the easy grilling type stuff also the seafood playlist but hey if you like this Canadian video good news because next week we drop a video for Canadian Thanksgiving got to give a nod uh to our amazing Canadian customers but that gives us an opportunity to jump into Turkey well before Thanksgiving here in the States and we'll show you what Texas sugar can do on that if you like what we're doing please like and subscribe we'll see you guys next week