Smoked Tuna! Are you drooling yet?
I saw this thread on I-fish about Smoked Tuna, and decided to give it a try on the Little Chief Smoker on Saturday while watching some football! We had some leftover tuna from canning that I was saving for just this occasion. Needless to say, I remembered that I was going to take a picture after we attacked it so there was a bunch missing. Otherwise, it was TASTY! See below for the recipe…
Reading through all the threads on I-fish, with all of the different salt concentrations and flavors and stuff, I opted for the simplest one:
- Cut Tuna into smaller chunks
- Put on Smoker
- Use 2 pans of Alder Chips in the first two hours
- Take off after 4 hours total
- Eat Smoked Tuna.
The tuna was a little dry, but it was also pretty oily, and would go really nicely with a medium or dark beer–maybe a Newcastle. We had some MGD on hand, and it tasted just fine, too.
I also invented a new way to clean the smoker racks!
- Remove tuna from racks
- Try to scrape the tuna fragments from the racks
- Notice three sets of eyes watching hopefully
- Put towel down on kitchen floor
- Lay smoker racks on floor
- Get your hand out of the way quickly!
- Watch the cat feeding frenzy!
Next time, I may add a little salt and pepper, and shorten the smoking time. I think my tuna pieces were a little too thin for 4 hours smoking, but for my first time, I was pretty happy with it. I sprayed the racks down with no-stick spray, but I may not have used enough, since it was a pain to clean this time, so I’ll try more next time.
Last time Clark and I went tuna fishing, or maybe it was salmon fishing another time, one of his friends had some smoked tuna, which was more moist and had a slightly different flavor, and I’ve got another vacuum-pack of tuna bellies ready to go in my freezer!
When you make some more save some for your friends
No brine soaking before smoking?
The last time I smoked Salmon i brine soaked it for 24 hrs, I thought it made the fish moisture.
I’ll admit the Lil’ Chief Smokers kick butt!
I just ate the last piece of smoked tuna mere hours ago… I’ll probably smoke some salmon or steelhead next, and will try to remember my friends this time!