We often get asked if you can smoke fish in a wood fired oven. The answer is YES! Here’s how.
Catch a fish
Can’t help you there sorry.
Prepare the fish
Place the filleted fish on a raised steel rack with tinfoil. We use brown sugar and sea salt for the seasoning. Taking your time here makes all the difference. Dry the fish by hanging or suspending and then wipe with a paper towel. Apply brown sugar and salt. Leave overnight or for at least 2 hours for best results. Dry once again as this helps with the texture. If the fish is too wet when smoked it will become mushy. Cover the fish loosely with tinfoil.
Prepare your oven
Your Authentic Ovens temperature needs to be between 230 -250 Degree C so that the smoking pallets start to smoke. This is the hot smoke method which is a quick and easy way to smoke fish. There is also a cold offset smoke which takes much longer and other equipment is needed. The use of wood chip like traditional smokers has mixed results because it burns off too quick so we use a slice of manuka (Ti-Tree). Approximately 3 mm thick slices. The slices produce a long smoke.
Smoking
Place the prepared fish in the hot oven and add two smoking pallets directly on the hearth. Once the pallets start to smoke you can close the insulated door sligtly but make sure its open enough to allow for the smoke to exit. This is very important!. Cooking times vary depending on the size of the fish. You can smoke the fish whole or in fillets. We prefer to use fillets so maximum flavour is on the eatable flesh of the fish. Its possible to cook at lower temps but you will need some hot ash from a separate fire to get the Manuka/TiTree slices to smoke.
Rest
Once the fish is removed from the oven take off the tinfoil and leave to rest for about 10 minutes before serving.