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The Waters of Alaska are a safe haven for salmon in recent years due to fishing laws put into place to prevent such devastations as the ones in the Atlantic ocean. In the nineteenth century a majority of Salmon were pulled from the Atlantic and canned in New England to be Eagerly sent to California in the 1840s. By the mid 1860s however the roles were switched around and California canned and shipped its salmon produce off to the east!

Today all Atlantic salmon come from Canada or Europe, while the waters of Alaska still teem with fish. This is due to modern methods of managing the seasonal fisheries in Alaska. Of the one billion pounds of salmon produced commercially worldwide, about 70% comes from farms, but not so in Alaska. All Alaskan fresh salmons are wild, living free in the waters of the Pacific Ocean before returning to the rivers where they were born.

Alaskans highly praise the value of the Salmons orange-red flesh and thought that any form of disrespect shown to these fish would cause Sea Gods to take the salmon away.

The close resource of Salmon made made it a common meal for the native people of Alaska due to the wide numbers of them throughout the year and the simplicity of smoking and preserving. The natives of Alaska respect this well desired product with tales from the past of Seas Gods taking away the Salmon if they were disrespected in anyway.

The high fat content makes salmon an ideal food to preserve and flavor with smoke. Native Alaskans have been doing just that for centuries. The natural oils of the fish welcome the smoke flavor and retain it in a splendid way. But creating the best mouth-watering Alaskan Smoked Salmon isn’t as simple as placing the salmon in the smokehouse.

Cures are categorized in two fields, wet and dry. Wet cures require the meat to be soaked in a brine solution which can contain pepper, sugar, salt, and other spices. The dry variety of curing is typically to produce cured only fish and contains a mix of herbs or fruit, seat salt, and sugar.

Another important fact that must be taken into count while smoking fish is the actually species of salmon. There are actually give different species of salmon which exist in Alaskan waters, and each offers a different taste in the combination of cures and smoking.

Today, people can find salmon on their local grocery store shelves, but this variety is typically farm raised and cold smoked. For any connoisseur, however, Alaskan High Quality Smoked Salmon is the best bet. The taste of Alaskan Salmon is comparable to fine wine when its properly smoked and cured correctly.

By Sherry Shantel