Place the fish in a dust-, cat- and dog-free place and allow to dry uncovered for about 4 hours until a skin ("pellicule") forms on the surface of the meat. Remove the fish, rinse, pat dry and lay out, skin side down, on cookie or jelly sheets lined with waxed paper. Brine the fish about 3 hours, refrigerated. Place a plate or some other object on top of the meat to keep it submerged. That way, when I get up to get started in the morning I just have to slip the fish into the brine. Warming the water accelerates the dissolving time but the water must be cool before putting the fish in, so I usually make the brine with warm water in the evening and then refrigerate it overnight. You have to stir for about 10 minutes to dissolve the salt and sugar completely. Mix brine well in a glass, porcelain or plastic container large enough to hold the fish meat and the brine. This is a three-step process (brine, dry, smoke) which takes all day, so you have to start early!Ĥ sides (fillets) of average-sized bluefish (5 - 7 lb of fillets). I usually put out a few bland crackers - saltines will do - or little toasts if I'm being fancy, and a sauce made of sour cream, lemon juice, horseradish and minced dill (proportions to taste). ![]() There are lots of uses for smoked bluefish, some of which I'll be posting here in the next few days, but my favorite way to serve it is just as it comes from the smoker, a nice honey brown side of fish. If I can't cook it within a few hours I just fire up the smoker, and that's what I did last week, since we had unchangable dinner plans the day we caught all those fish. ![]() For more information - and more recipes - see Blues, John Hersey's meditation about a summer spent fishing for blues off Martha's Vineyard.) Since they swim in feeding schools, it's a common enough occurance for a fisherman to have a lot of bluefish in a hurry, so there are whole books of what to do with bluefish.a popular one is subtitled "101 Ways to Get Rid of Bluefish." (For those unacquainted with the bluefish, it's a powerful cold water Atlantic predator fish, quite plentiful, and it has dark, oily flesh, a lot like mackerel. I usually grill it whole or fillet it and simmer the meat in a mixture of saké, murin (Japanese sweet cooking wine), soy sauce and some shredded ginger. I've become spoiled by living within range of the bluefish run for so many years, so my position on bluefish is that it's great if you cook it within a few hours of catching fresh-tasting, flavorful, meaty. ![]() We took a couple of rods and a few beers out on an absolutely fabulous September afternoon to check up on the bluefish activity, which is usually pretty good this time of year, and came back in a few hours with about 30 pounds of fish.
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