Brown Sugar Smoked Salmon

American Entree

BROWN SUGAR SMOKED SALMON

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon dill
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 pounds salmon fillets
vegetable oil

SPECIAL UTENSILS

smoker
electric thermometer
wood chips (apple, cherry, and alder are the most popular)

Serves 6. Takes 3 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add brown sugar, dill, pepper, and salt to small mixing bowl. Blend thoroughly with whisk. This is the rub. Cut salmon into 6 fillets. Pat salmon fillets dry. Rub an equal amount of rub all over the meat sides of each fillet. Let fillets sit in refrigerator for 2 hours.

30 minutes before fillets have finished refrigerating, brush grills in smoker with vegetable oil. This prevents the fish from sticking. Preheat smoker to 220 degrees. When temperature of smoker reaches 220 degrees, place fillets meat side up on grills. Smoke salmon until its internal temperature reaches 150 degrees. It should take about 1 hour 15 minutes, depending on your smoker. The salmon fillets should be pink and flaky.

TIDBITS

1) Plates are round because alien spaceships were round. Alien UFOs were living things. Aliens conquered Earth 66 million years ago. The outer spacers treated our dinosaurs most horribly. A scant million years later the dinos formulated their plan of rebellion, “Rush ‘em, crush ‘em, chomp ‘em.” The uprising was succeeding! Hooray! All the dinosaurs looked up and did a happy dance.

3) But the huge mother spaceship, it really was a mother, beamed a huge death ray at the rampaging dinos. The ray, however, merely reflected off the rebels’ cat-like eyes, disintegrating the mother ship. Circular living bits fell to Earth. Whenever the dinos laid eggs they did so on these bits, for the smarter dinosaurs knew round things can’t grow if weighed down. Today, we weigh down our round plates with food, just in case they are spaceship babies. When we’re not using our plates, we stack them in the cupboard for the same reason. You can’t be too careful with space aliens.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.