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To Smoke Salmon

Cenarth, Carmarthenshire

Cockle-gathering tools - a large sieve, a rake and cocses.

In the past, experienced fishermen would smoke salmon during the winter months towards the beginning of the salmon season.  This was the only method of preserving them at that time.  The following method was practised by a fisherman from the Cenarth district, on the Carmarthenshire border:

Fish

The Recipe

You will need

Method

  1. Hang the salmon from its tail, split it open from the tail down to the head, remove the entrails and wash it thoroughly. 
  2. Remove the bone found underneath the vent and fill that cavity with saltpetre. 
  3. Keep the salmon open with a row of short skewers (approximately nine inches long). 
  4. Treat about a dozen salmon in this way. 
  5. Lay the salmon on their backs on a bed of salt in a stone or wooden trough, fill the open cavity with salt and keep all well covered with salt for a fortnight. 
  6. Then remove them from the salt and wash them in fresh, running water (the old fishermen laid them in a shallow pool in the river for three days and three nights).
  7. When clean, hang them over a fire of withered oak leaves, allowing the smoke to whirl around them for three days and three nights.  Usually, they would be hung by their tails from large nails driven into the open chimney stacks, with large branches of holly keeping them well away from the chimney wall. 
  8. Store them in a convenient dry place, cut into steaks when needed and fry in butter.

Cenarth, Carmarthenshire.

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