I started to cure food in smoke about thirty years ago and naturally the first product to experiment on was a fish. In Russia all kinds of smoked products have been always considered to be appetizers served with alcohol. So that’s why spices and salting have been of less importance. And nowadays many so-called chefs in Russia cannot imagine themselves cooking but not drinking alcohol at the same time. It is kind of old tradition.
The most difficult thing was to calculate the quantity of salt to use with fish and seafood. The excess of salt deprives a product’s taste or turns it into an appetizer again.
I’m going to tell a secret of salting for a further smoking process.
Fish and seafood contain a great amount of liquid that’s why I chose dry salting instead of humid one. I weigh 2% of salt and use it to sprinkle a product, rubbing it thoroughly and turning it upside down regularly meanwhile it stays in the fridge for the next 24 hours. This way it’s impossible to oversalt a meal or salt it insufficiently.
As for the squids besides the salt the following ingredients were added:
Counting for the 1400 gr of squids
Ground pepper — 4 gr Fresh lemon juice — two lemons
Minced garlic — 5 cloves
The next day I did my best to dry the squids at most and put them into the camera of hot-smoking with apple sawdust.
Temperature in smoking camera — 60 C Time — 1 hours
Leave the squids to cool. They are ready to taste.
I guess I know what the following question is: what for to smoke squids if not for the party with beer?
Instead of answering this question I’ll better give you another free recipe.
You need to cook plain white rice previously thoroughly rinsed with water. Finely chop smoked squids to the rice, add a tablespoon of clarified butter, cumin and red pepper. Drizzle a bit with soy sauce. Mix it well and warm it up in microwave for a minute. You’ll be surprised by the perfect scent and refined taste of this magnificent meal.