We smoked a whole salmon today. The salmon came from the fish department of a local Asian market.

The recipe came from a Facebook pit master from the Netherlands. The secret ingredient was fennel, along with fresh herbs and lots of lemon slices and wedges.

This was an Asian style cook. The head and tail were cut off the night before and these delicacies were eaten for dinner. These are parts that we normally throw away in the US, but are considered the best part of the fish in Asia.

Once ready, the meat is picked off the bones with chop sticks.

Below are pictures of the prepped salmon; the salmon after we pulled it out to test; the finished ready to eat salmon.

I had some problems with the bottom cooking much faster than the top so we had to flip it. That spoiled the aesthetics, but did not impact the taste, which was described as spectacular by the family (I am not a real Salmon fan so I have not tried it yet. I cooked tacos for dinner. I'll try it tomorrow.)


The last chart shows the temperature profile of the cook. After the flip, which you can see on the chart, one probe was placed on the bottom of the big side to monitor the rest of the cook.

The crazy temperature readings at the end were from having to restart my grill after it shut down due to a faulty power outlet. The hot restart resulting in a temperature spike that I had to manage.

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I assume with the skin left on and the fish cooked whole (so no interior meat exposed), no real smoke flavor to fish?

I assume with the skin left on and the fish cooked whole (so no interior meat exposed), no real smoke flavor to fish?

According to my wife there was a smoky flavor but it did not penetrate far into the fish.

I assume that the lower graph is the IT. That is somewhat hotter than the traditional NW salmon are cooked.

My wife likes the fish at 145. The video that I got the recipe from actually pulled it at around 115.