Smoked Bluefish

I bought two bluefish fillets to smoke. The pair weighed a little over 3 lbs and so served the four of us dinner with leftovers for lunch or snacks or appetizers or another meal. We all love smoked fish, so I don't expect it to last very long.

Smoked Bluefish
2 qts water
1/2 C salt
1/2 C sugar
1/4 C soy sauce
1 T dill weed
1 lemon
sage

Mix water, salt and sugar until the solids are dissolved. Add everything else and mix. I found a couple of sprigs of 'fresh' sage looking forlorn in the basket where I keep my garlic and ginger which was halfway to being dryish, so I crumbled that up and added it to the brine. Soak fish for 8 hours. I have a charcoal Meco water smoker which basically means you can't skrew anything up no matter what you do. Follow directions, it smoked about 2 hours with beech chips as the smoke source.

Oh, and don't use it indoors stamped all over the thing and in all the ads. Uh, ok. I'm also really sick of warnings labels on everything. So, I offer this Frazz which sums up my interpretation of warning stupidity quite well:


Appropriate © to Jef Mallett

Back to the fish. I made a mayonnaise, mustard and horseradish sauce to go with it, I give you no proportions, I just tasted until it worked. And it turned out to be completely superfluous. This is an incredibly simple and tasty way to cook fish.