Smoking your own fish. Hot smoking and cold smoking techniques. Delicious hot smoked trout!

Traditionally smoking food was a way to cure your meat, fish or cheese to make them last longer in a world without fridges or freezers. Hot or cold smoking also adds an incredible flavour and texture to food and fish is one of the best foodstuffs to smoke as it absorbs flavour so well.

There are two basic methods of smoking - hot smoking and cold smoking and this article concentrates on hot smoking.

Hot smoking, as the name suggests uses and heat to smoke to cook and smoke the food at the same time. This means that cooking times are quite short compared to cold smoking. You could hot smoke a whole trout in about 30 mins while a fillet will only take around 10 mins.

Choosing a hot smoker

There are lots of different smokers on the market you can also make your own very cheaply and simply. My preference is the Snowebee hot smoker which retails for about £45.

An example of hot smoking trout with a portable smoker.

Step 1 - Add your wood chips to the bottom of the smoker tray, place your wire rack over the chips and lay your fish on top.

Step 2 - Light the meth burners under the tray and place the lid on the smoker

Step 3 - After about 10 mins (for fillets) lift up the lid and check the fish is cooked.

Step 4 - Voila! Delicious smoked trout. Eat straight away!