Smokehouse Hard-Smoked Salmon (Hard Cure)
Pacific Northwest (Tlingit / Haida / Coast Salish). This is traditional Pacific Northwest preservation smoking, the hard-cured, long-smoked salmon that nations like the Tlingit, Haida, and Coast Salish made to last through winter, distinct from the soft hot-smoked salmon in the beginner section. The fish is salt-cured, dried to form a hard skin (pellicle), then cool-smoked over alder for many hours until firm and preserved. It carries real food-safety weight and demands patience and temperature control, which is why it lives in the advanced section. A genuine ancestral craft.
Ingredients
- 0.5 cupcoarse salt— Cure
- 0.3 cupbrown sugar or maple sugar— Cure
- 1 tbspcoarse black pepper— Cure
- 1 sidesalmon side, skin on, cut into long thick strips along the grain— Main
- alder wood for cool smoking— Main
- 1 tsppink curing salt (cure #1) for safety on the long smoke (optional)— Main
Method
Confirm you understand the risks
This recipe involves a food-safety-critical technique — cold smoking, raw or lightly-smoked fish, or taro (luau) leaf cookery. Each carries real risk if cure ratios, sourcing, temperatures, or cook times are wrong. Before following these steps, please review our food-safety guide and confirm the technique with at least one other reputable source (USDA, FDA, or a published reference).
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