The holidays, my mom’s birthday (on winter solstice) and my birthday all fall in the month of December, and so early winter has always been a time of a lot of celebration for my family. One of the most memorable ways we would celebrate the holidays was by making gravlax. I remember the first week of December every year, opening up the fridge to see a tray of fish pressed down with a brick wrapped in tin foil (more on that later), and I would know the holidays had started. This is the gravlax my mom brought as an app to dinner parties, served on Christmas Eve, and that we ate on bagels as a quick breakfasts on the way to the ski hill.

Note: this recipe is adapted from George Lange’s Café Des Artistes recipe, printed originally in the New Basics Cook Book.

Ingredients for Gravlax

2 salmon fillets

2 tablespoons of aquavit (I use Brennevin, which is an unsweetened Icelandic spirit)

1/3 cup coarse kosher salt

1/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons course ground or crushed black pepper

Fresh dill springs

Mustard Dill Sauce

1 ½ tablsepoons of white wine vinegar (red wine vinegar works if that is all you have)

1 tablespoon sugar

½ cup olive oil

5 tablespoons Dijon Mustard

1 chopped fresh dill sprig

1 heaping tablespoon white or black ground peppercorn

For Serving

A few lemons

A few fresh springs of dill

One sliced and toasted baguette

Instructions

1. Slowly thaw your salmon fillets in the fridge (I prefer to thaw overnight). Rinse the fillets and pat dry with a paper towel. Place the fillets flesh side up in a container (I use a glass Pyrex) and sprinkle with the aquavit.

2. Combine sugar, salt and black pepper in a bowl and rub into the skinless side of the fillets. Cover the fillets in fresh dill springs and place one on top of the other (skin on the outside, flesh touching.

3. Cover the fillet with foil. Place a platter or chopping board over the fillets and weigh it down. My mom uses a foil wrapped brick resting on top, but you can use whatever! I’ve used cans, rocks, and even books in the past.

4. Refrigerate for 24-36 hours, flipping the fillets over every 12 hours.

5. When the salmon is finished marinating, brush off extra salt/pepper mixture, cut off the skin, and slice into thin pieces.

6. Whisk together the ingredients for the mustard dill sauce, toast your baguette bread, and enjoy!

Note: The leftover salmon skin can be cut into small strips and fried for a great garnish or salad topper!

People ask me all the time what my favorite way to eat salmon is, and smoking it is definitely up there. Smoked salmon makes a great app for dinner parties, as an addition to scrambled eggs in the morning, topped on salad, or even alone as a trail snack on winter ski tours. Below is my favorite recipe for smoking your own Slipstream Sockeye salmon at home.

This recipe calls for two sockeye fillets, however I always recommend doubling or tripling this recipe because firing up the smoker is a bit of a process and I go through the smoked salmon so fast!

What you’ll need:

Apple or cherry wood pellets for your smoker

Two sockeye salmon fillets

1/3 cup Kosher salt

1 cup brown sugar

Maple syrup

Black pepper

Instructions:

1. Rinse your salmon fillets in cold water, pat dry, cut into four pieces and place them in a lidded container (I use a glass Pyrex with the lid, it is perfect for brining your fish and storing the final smoked product.) Mix together your bring ingredients: the salt and brown sugar. Cover your fish with the brine mixture. You can stack two fillets on top of each other, just be sure to stack them with skin on the outside and the flesh side touching.

2. I recommend brining your fish for 24 hours, flipping your fillets over and spooning the brink mixture over the salmon every 4 hours or so. However, you can brine for as little as 12 hours if that is all you have time for or up to 36 hours. Length of time in the brine will affect how salty your smoked salmon is and give it that beautiful caramelized quality.

3. After your 24 hours in the brine, remove the fish, draining off the brine mixture (some people rinse the salmon however I like to leave the brine coating on for a sweet and salty affect, but play around and find what you like!) Let the fish dry for around 3 hours in a cold airy place. In the winter I let the fish dry outside, but you could also let it dry in a cool room with a fan. This step really helps the salmon develop that gorgeous shiny skin when it smokes.

4. Now, it is time to put your fish in the smoker. Although this is a hot smoked recipe, it is absolutely key to keep your smoker at a low temperature. Otherwise you will get what is called albumin (like a white film) on the meat, which is actually a liquid protein leaving the fish caused by too much heat, and it really dries out a fillet (in all ways of cooking salmon, not just smoking!) I start with my smoker at 140 to 150 degrees for an hour and a half and then raise the temperature to around 175 degrees for two hours. After this point, your salmon will be sufficiently smoked, however I prefer to smoke my salmon for up to around 6 hours for a more “candied” approach as it makes a great trail snack or charcuterie board addition.

5. As your fish smokes, baste it with maple syrup and grind black pepper on it every hour. This will also serve to brush away any albumin that builds up during the smoking process.

6. Your smoked salmon should keep for about 10 days in the fridge, or up to three weeks if it is vacuum sealed. You can also vacuum seal your extra smoked salmon and freeze it for later!

Enjoy, and don’t be afraid to play around with this recipe to tweak it for your personal preferences and your smoker!

Another salmon season just wrapped up! We worked hard, slept little and came home tired and happy and having harvested quite a few bright sockeye of our own. I am so grateful for the abundance of this fishery, all due to the biologists who help manage it and ensure healthy runs for years to come. I’m feeling very lucky to have a boat that ran well all season and for the opportunity to be a participant in this fishery. My fish is currently making its way on a barge from Naknek, Alaska to Seattle, Washington where it will then travel by freezer truck to Vermont and Wyoming. The great thing about barges and freezer trucks is that the carbon footprint of travel by sea and land is much less than that of frozen freight that travels by air, even if travel time is slower.

I’m really looking forward to sharing fish with friends and family. Nights cooking sockeye on the grill, curing gravlax and smoking some fillets for backcountry snacks and charcuteries!

Being a commercial fisherman requires you to not just live in accordance to the tides, but the seasons as well. Summer is for long days on the water making your season’s catch. Spring is for to do lists that span the day, boat repairs, hanging nets, and swapping tales of winter with old friends in the boat yard.

This week I’m in Naknek starting to ready the boat for the upcoming salmon season. Days are spent going through the mechanical systems on board and assessing what damage the harsh northern winter has done, replacing steering lines and motors and making sure I have everything I’ll need to for repairs when I’m out on the water for the season. Nights are spent lying awake in excitement, thinking about the way the water looks alive with the jumping silver bodies of sockeye salmon when the run is at its peak. Some nights, of course, are spent lying awake trying to remember if I ordered filters for the boat, or have enough corks to hang my fishing nets, but that is another story all together.

Soon now, we will be on the water, fishing late into the daylit night you only experience this close to the North Pole. Soon, the sockeye will be rushing upstream as we line our nets along the muddy banks of these great rivers to try to catch them. The water is brackish and cold, and although it moves quickly with the tides, I’ve never seen rivers so full of life.

Mud and Honey