Processing & Canning 35 Wild Alaskan Salmon

Welcome back to the channel. Today Eric and I are going to be processing 35 beautiful Copper River Red Salmon also known as Sockeye Salmon. These are a very prized fish in Alaska for their flavor. They are amazing. Eric and I have had the pleasure of dipping them twice now and we definitely agree that the flavor is superior. Being in Alaska we have had many fishing opportunities so we have been able to try salmon fresh out of the ocean and honestly it's all good. It's always all good. How could you complain when you're eating one of these fresh? So these ones in particular though they are highly valued because they travel so far up a river that their bodies actually have more fat on them when they make that journey hence they have a little bit more flavor when you're actually cooking them. We found that these ones are amazing for canning because of that extra fat. We don't add a lot of extra ingredients when we are canning our fish so these fish are awesome for that process with all that extra fat. We're going to be doing lots of things with this fish today so we have got our work cut out for us and we've got to get started. We got plans for these fish. Canned, smoked, fillets, steaks, all kinds of good stuff. We're going to do something a little different that we don't usually do. It just sounded really good to me with this particular fish. We're going to do like some bone-in steaks. It's going to be awesome and I'm going to throw a couple on that skillet right there because we're getting hungry so let's see if we can do this. Oh my gosh, there's that red. That is so red. Okay, it's got them right there. Oh my gosh. So we got home last night at midnight, slept for a little. We're still recovering from this trip. I got everything unloaded. We got our little stations planned out. We're really excited for this fish. Every time you go on a fishing trip, you're not guaranteed to get the fish. So the fact that we went down there, got 35 salmon and we're back here within 36 hours is just amazing. So we got this thing cleaned out. Let me show you what I mean by cutting some steaks out of it. All right, I had to switch knives there. This bigger one here worked a lot better but that's it right there. Beautiful. That's so good looking. So we're going to do like the big section of the body. I'll get a few of these. These we're just going to freeze and just be able to pull these out of the freezer and eat them. And then this bottom section here, we're going to just fillet this kind of like a regular salmon and we'll smoke these ones. All right, we're going to try this. It is super hot. It's super moist. It's really good. It's like fatty almost, like oily. That's good. Eric's going to have to have a bite of this for sure. All salmon that we catch here in Alaska is really good. It's all just like a tiny bit different though. And like we've said, this one is just fattier. It actually has like a fatty, oily flavor to it. And those steaks like that is awesome. This is so cool. Bones in there though. We've got quite the system here. This one is like carcasses. Probably going to use it for dog food and chicken food. We have the little steaks, the bone-in ones we're putting in there. The salmon eggs are going in here. We have fillets that didn't turn out as good or the ones I cut the steaks out of, the little tail piece. Those are in there. So those are definitely getting smoked. And then in this one, we have the fillets that are just real perfect and nice looking. Those will get frozen. And then the ones that we don't freeze, those will also go on the smoker. A lot of people out on the Copper River, they'll go out and catch their fish and they'll clean them right there. They'll take the fillets home with them. They'll throw the carcasses in the river. Some other animal will eat them. We do not do that because we like to use a lot of the fish, mainly because we have animals and they get to enjoy this salmon with us. All of the fish we have processed so far, I think we've, we haven't done that many. We've done like eight or ten. Every single one has been a female. So we've gotten eggs from every single one. Ariel pointed this one out. She said, I think that one's a male. She's usually right. Let's see. Yeah, he's got that hook nose. Looks like a male. Hey, you're right, Ariel. That's a big male. Sometimes the males do have that more bump on there. Not like this right here, like a hump almost. How many you got in there? Just two fish so far? Looks like we got nine. We got a nice big fat one here. We're going to try something that we haven't done and that is going to be smoked bellies. So I'm going to fillet this thing like I normally would all the way down to the belly. I'm going to clean it up and I'm going to take nice like one inch thick strips off of each one of these fillets and that's going to be like a nice boneless piece of belly meat and we're going to hang that in the smoker tomorrow. That's it. That's a piece of belly meat from a pretty big one. What we're going to do in the smoker is hang our little sticks in there that we use to smoke the hooligan and we're going to smoke them just like that and that is going to be copper river red smoked belly meat. That's going to be good. This one actually has a nice belly too. It's small. All right I'm giving it a go for a little. Usually I am the salmon scraper and that's just where we run this spoon along and get the extra meat on the carcass for like burgers or patties. Honestly we'd like to leave a lot of meat on the carcass truthfully because this is going to be made into dog food and if I were to strip it of everything then I wouldn't have any nutrients for my dog. So this is going to be cooked down for them. Eric and I often have a little bit of a debate between processing salmon. We both have our own like way to do it. He's definitely done a lot more than me but it is we get really good practice here getting to fillet a lot of salmon. There you go. I think it looks pretty decent. Everyone has their own way to process salmon of course so a lot of that actually really does come down to what you're going to use the fish for what kind of cuts but we predominantly use like a nice fillet like this. Look at the fat. So much extra fat. Look at that. Look at all this fish. I know isn't it? It's so delicate. I love the tail piece. Oh yeah look at that. I gotta get that bones off of you now. This is gonna go in the smoker and or some steaks? We got some steaks. I don't think we need steaks anymore. I think fillets or bellies it's up to you. I don't have that many bellies. That's a nice one for bellies. Didn't realize how sore my legs were from hiking up that hill until now but it is about 11 p.m. We got a late start today. We can get started till like seven o'clock and that is a wrap. That was 35 copper river red salmon. We've got them all iced down in different buckets and we will see it which is nice big fillets. We'll smoke them. We'll pull the skin off and we'll just can the meat and this next little bucket here we're going to do a little different. We're going to leave these ones skin on. These are going to be real good. You got enough room? I got some pepper. All right those look really good. We salt and peppered these ones outside of the smoker. Since these ones I'm actually going to hang on our little sticks that we got in the smoker. They're going to sit down a little bit lower. Let's get these ones on. Let's salt and pepper the stuff that's already on there. I think we're ready to fire this thing up. Got two. Well I am going to guarantee that that is the most beautiful smoker I have ever seen in my life. Let's fire this bad We did brown sugar, heavy dose of salt. Rinse those off and maybe like a half an hour to an hour and those are going to go on the smoker. Over here next to me we have lox. So that's just a nice beautiful salmon fillet heavily coated with salt. We're going to cover that with something and we'll stick it in the ice chest for a couple days and that'll be ready to enjoy. Well it was a wonderful day until it was not. Everything was going so great. We were all excited about our timing and everything. I wanted to get a little shot of our smoker when I noticed that it was bellowing a little bit more than usual. I notified Eric. He took off the top, not the top, but the front and there was a massive fire. So he immediately reacted and like squirted it down. Not the fish thankfully, but the fire got that under control and we actually surprisingly made another little bit of a mistake. We thought our fish would be fine that we cut into strips when we put them on the sticks, but they're really heavy and the fish is really delicate and moist when it's fresh like that. If you cure it first and then put it on the smoker, you know it firms up a lot. We should have done that because some of our fish had fallen just a little bit of it. Not damaged. We were able to clean it, but it kind of just like ruined the ambiance of our day. So we're getting cleaned up. Well that was a fiasco. I'm not gonna lie. So I think what the problem was is I pushed the fire back a little bit too far. I didn't want it right underneath the little strips that we had hanging. So I pushed it back a little too far and it caught the back of the smoker on fire, but we got everything taken care of. We pulled some of it off. So we are gonna run two batches on the smoker. No big deal. This salmon, because we're gonna can it, we usually don't smoke it for more than a couple hours. So this first batch is actually almost done and we got the bellies here and I just rinsed off all the sugar and salt and they are looking beautiful and they firmed up a little bit and these ones we are gonna hang on the little stick. These ones should hold together just fine. Do you see that? Yeah, it's dripping. Yeah. Look at that. It's dripping. It's like constantly dripping. That's why these ones have so much juice in them when we can them. Look at the skin. Awesome. Great job. Beautiful. It's really delicate. There's a lot of flavor. Good with that salt. I'm extremely surprised this fit in one bucket. That's done. Looks good. Smells delicious. I can't wait to try with those bellies. This is all done. They look really good. This is my first smoked salmon belly. Oh, wow. That tastes like chicken. Try that. That's absolutely delicious. Does that not look weirdly good? Well, it is another late Alaskan summer night so we're gonna pull these off and we're gonna get started on our canning tomorrow. This is our dog food. It is all ready. It's cooked down for a whole day. It's nice and broken down. There's still some really nice chunks of fish in there. The dogs are gonna enjoy that. We're gonna get this jarred up and put in our freezer. I saw an eyeball there. There you go. We ended up with 52 jars of beautiful dog food or chum as we like to call it. When we make these, we make sure to fill up just below the shoulder of the jar. We don't want that to freeze and expand and crack the jar. These are going to be going in our freezer. We cooked them for a few hours so there's no concern with parasites and the bones are super soft. Our dogs do eat raw salmon too in the winter. Sometimes we have extra fillets that we'll give to them and freezing them for a period of like a few days to really two weeks is honestly the best thing you can do to make sure there are not worms in that salmon. We're gonna get these over to our freezer and jar up our salmon. Jarring up the salmon. We're keeping it simple. We got garlic from last year's harvest so it's pretty old. This is the last of our garlic. We're gonna put herbs. We have all different kinds. Oregano, dill, tarragon, thyme, parsley, all kinds of good stuff. We're wiping our jars down with vinegar. We're gonna get them lidded and banded and we have two full pressure cans so far which is awesome. That's 32 jars of beautiful copper smoked salmon. Thing of beauty right there. These are gonna go inside on the stove and we're gonna pressure can them for a hundred minutes. Well our salmon is all done. I guess it's not actually all done because we have one more round to do. This is the salmon that we left the skin on and it turned out beautiful. It looks awesome in the jar. We've got to do another round of those. After we pull all these out we made some fresh breadsticks. We're heading back outside and we are going to make a special dish with those bellies that we smoked yesterday. We're in Ariel's kitchen tonight but first I have to figure out how to turn on our camp chef. I think I remember. Okay clearly I don't. What do you do? There's a trick. Spark it. We're ready. So this dip is very simple. We're starting with some of our garlic that has been frozen in olive oil but it's not cooked yet. It's raw so I'm gonna cook quite a bit of that. More garlic is better. We're on to the bellies and they are awesome. I can't even really put words into it what it tastes like but it has so much fat and oil it almost tastes like a different type of meat like pork or something. It's really it's really odd. It's the most flavorful salmon I've ever had ever to date. It's delicious. I'm just gonna remove the skin and break this up for our dip. My kitchen I stay very organized. I eat while I cook and I leave my stuff on high and I turn my back. Right in this goes and then we are adding some kefir cheese. I'm gonna have my assistant chop up some parsley and chives for the top. Do you see the oils coming out of the fish? This looks amazing. I was anticipating this. All those oils from the garlic and the salmon are just making themselves known. So let's put our topping on there and we're gonna dig in. Oh my goodness. I'm gonna try the first bite and then Eric's gonna get to try it too. It's pretty good. It's good. I mean what more can I say? It's delicious. I tend to smell my food before I eat it and I can taste this one before I eat it and it's good. I really love kefir cheese. It's kind of like cream cheese but a little more sour. It's like sour yogurt I guess but it has a good consistency and the salmon is incredible of course. That's crazy. A lot of hard work went into this fish. That dip, it's one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life. I'm not just saying that. We're pretty much done with the salmon. We caught it. We preserved it. It's in the freezer. We got it in jars but we have one more meal to eat and that is the lox. So I think we got one more day on that. We'll see you guys then. This is a good arrow. Look at the oil from that fish. Our lox is done. Went for two and a half days. I've never had lox and we're going to do it the way that most people do it. We're going to do it on a bagel with cream cheese, red onions, and capers. Errol made us the most delicious sourdough bagels this morning. We had a neighbor gift us some capers. We're ready to go. Let's put one of these together. This looks fantastic and I think it has a lot of like significance to us. I didn't actually dip net all these fish. You did but it's just a really special fish I guess. That's what I'm smelling. Onions or capers right away. I think it's the capers I'm smelling. That's a really good combination. That fish is a little bit salty. I think it's a pretty good time to leave it two days. I may leave it for just a hair less and it'd be a little less salty but I do like how firm it is. The combination is amazing. Let me try just a piece just by itself so I can really get a taste for the fish. Oh yeah. That's salty. I think it's good. I think it's perfect. I don't know. It's good. It's great. I've had lox before. It was good. This is great. The whole package. Out of this world. I know I probably said it before but the trip was amazing. It worked out in our favor. We got these wonderful, wonderful, awesome fish. I personally love bringing the whole fish home and I like that they can really be useful for us. Not just for our food for a year but also you know down the line of the dogs, the chickens, and even you know into the garden too sometimes. So that's really significant for me. We ended up with how many jars? 40 jars of canned salmon. We have the steaks which we're really excited about. Those are vacuum packed in the freezer. Really excited about those ones and then all the fillets. We did a ton of fillets that we cut in half and then we vacuum sealed those. Got some extra belly meat. Those are frozen. The belly meat, that's frozen. And 35 fish might seem like a lot of fish. It is but this is our food. This is our meat. We don't go to the grocery store and buy meat. What we got here is what we got. We have a little jarred salmon left from the previous season which is awesome because it's carryover for us and we have actually been eating that pretty consistently. So this is now our like new replenishment. So I'm really, really happy that that trip worked out and we have this lovely, lovely, very fatty, oily salmon. I gotta hand it to Eric because these are awesome and we wouldn't have these fish if it weren't for you dipping them since I only dip into two. Well it was fun and we are gonna make some more because these are delicious. We'll see you guys next time. You got that onion right there? Yeah, my onion. I don't want to say my favorite part is the cream cheese. I'm sorry my least favorite part is probably the cream cheese but the cream cheese breaks because the capers and the lox are strong. The bagel's really good with the flavor. I'm really glad we got the capers. I'll put a little more on mine. How much do you think it would cost if you bought this at a restaurant or a bagel shop? At least 13 bucks. A Copper River though? 13 bucks? No, like lox normally on a bagel and I don't know Copper River upwards 18. I'd buy it for 18 dollars. I borderline think that's almost perfect. I could take it a little salty or a little firmer. I could also take it a little less salty but it would be less firm which I don't like. I like firm and minimal salt. So you're saying it's perfect. If you could take it either way I would say that we nailed it.