Caring for yur herring, or, The Blind Robins Thread

[horseshoer]

30 herring made 5 lbs of dressed bodies. I will be more ready time-wise next year to smoke a larger batch and pickle some too.
Scaled, gutted, heads & fins removed. When you run yur thumb as shown from anal are forward with a little pressure it kinda butterflies the fish and allows one to get the blood surrounding the backbone out.
Made a paste of the following ingredients, and they now will brine and take on flavor for 1 week in the fridge, then I am gonna cold smoke them.
5 c brown sugar
2.5 lbs coarse salt
3 Tbls cloves, crushed
5 Tbls onions, minced
5 Tbls garlic, minced
3 Tbls bay leaves, crushed
Once brined I'll rinse and hang em out to dry until they are thoroughly dry and then cold smoke em at about 80* for a week and they'll be done.


IBNFSHN, coming this way when they are done for a generous portion may make for the perfect excuse for us to crawl in a floating gutwagon named The Onion and catch some fish if you can see clear and feel like it.

[horseshoer]

Will work them around daily to insure all surfaces get brine contact. Thoroughly smeared brine into the chest cavities after this pic was taken. Cant believe how few folks I ax down here have never had smoked fish. My 2nd gig this morning is a lady of Finnish descent, from Michigan originally. We concluded that maybe this is somewhat of a northern thing due to the Scandinavian settlement there. Almost all country folks had an improvised Rube Goldberg smoker back home and like she said, wrapped in newspaper was the common means of transporting em. Carp and other similar rough fish (buffalo, redhorse, etc..) are excellent when smoked, chubs, lake trout, whitefish. Fatty fish take on the flavor of the brine & smoke better than lean, firm white-fleshed fish but they smoke up well also. I must find some fruit wood or in a pinch pecan cuz mesquite is too strong and I like hickory but it just dont taste right compared to a good fruitwood. Nobody up north torched an apple or pear tree for firewood, there was always demand for it in smoking, and alder also. As IBNFSHN discovered at some point, smoked fish is GOOD! You drop into any little municipal or small beer joint/bar up north and odds are someone will drag in a smoked eelpout wrapped in the Sunday paper
and the napkins come out and all enjoy, pat the gracious dude or lady on the back, and dig in.
Sabi, this is not "Marinated sheeps eyes" or whatever terminology you used in reference to my inconceivable culinary quirks yesterday.:p Every grocer around carries pickled herring and smoked salmon (lox). We need to expand yur culinary horizons. I am not one to say if ya try and something and dont like it that it aint the right of yur taste buds to draw that conclusion but we are not going to extremes and desperation measures to make a dog turd edible outta starvation here, this is some good eats dude. I just cant see a person turn up their nose over some pre-conceived notion. Who doesnt like bacon, a good pork chop, ham? Yet of all critters, a pig will do poopie and turn around & eat it like its cordon bleu. A chikkin aint much better about its' personal hygiene. My Dad would always pose the question "would you eat a horse?" Why heck no was the reply. Dad would give them the same reference to hogs I just made and then tell them if a horse gets turned around and happens to crap in its' feeder he wont even stick his nose in it to try eat the oats out from around it.
I think I make a valid point when I say that in the scheme of evolution, if somehow cats had been available and suited to grow & put on meat, today we would all be spending good $ to find a place heralded as having good food and be ordering up a Manx med. rare, or a Persian smothered in sauteed onions and covered with Hollandaise sauce.:D Those Vienna Sausage I snarfed on yur tub the day we fished the James I guarantee ya would leave you with post traumatic stress disorder if you ever toured a Hormel plant and
saw what goes in em, and nowhere near as cleanly handled, washed, pampered like my marinated sheeps eyes are.:D

[Barnacle Bill]

I tried to smoke them once but they wouldn't stay lit.

[Doodlum]

I got smoked once and tried to eat one.

[slabenomics]

i got some frozen for my crab pots ,,,,,,,fair trade to me

[horseshoer]

Like always when jumping the gun, it was hard to keep lit and the skin kept clogging the screen in my pipe. Finally got a few hits in, harsh, but man, euphoria. Sweet part is, after a few hits have taken effect you can eat the remainder.

[crappie12]

Like always when jumping the gun, it was hard to keep lit and the skin kept clogging the screen in my pipe. Finally got a few hits in, harsh, but man, euphoria. Sweet part is, after a few hits have taken effect you can eat the remainder.

I can't belive you smoke that stuff:D

[sedgeworth]

I can't belive you smoke that stuff:D

That aint herring he is smoking c12,What was the challenge? I tried it once standing up in a hammock,anything close?

[horseshoer]

That aint herring he is smoking c12,What was the challenge? I tried it once standing up in a hammock,anything close?

Had an ottoman on caster wheels in TX, gave the ol lady tours of the house on.
She was along for the ride, I powered it & steered.
I became quite proficient piloting the thing as time went on, and discovered the gear sequence, mastered the 2 speed reverse, and if I let my toenails grow long and curled my toes under found it had positraction and 4WD. The only glitch we encountered was when we were WOT the steering got erratic
and the ol lady would get mad if I accidently took her into the wall. Sheetrock had dents in it in various locations that matched up with the top of her head. Wanna really make her mad I'd take our craft and point it into a corner, and once wedged in there set the emergency brakes and work on it for a while. We had it on 2 wheels occasionally doing turns in too high of a gear and too much speed but never rolled it. Lived in a garage apartment and never had much of a straightaway, short course track you might say. Kitchen was long & narrow and ottoman barely fit when passing between fridge and stove, had to back out. The throttle stuck open once in there and thankfully at the end of the road a tall plastic garb can that held the dogfood rested, buffered the impact for her noggin. When the tour had reached its' apex and was over I often found myself on the floor collapsed next to the ottoman while the ol lady finally let her arm and leg muscles relax and she would be draped over it like a deer on the hood of a truck. Only linoleum was in the kitchen and step on the gas just a little and we were rolling but on the carpet I had to put it in a low gear and keep pressure on the accelerator. That kitchen was tricky, touch the brakes and she'd spin out from under me
and ya had a runaway train & have to go recouple the tugboat to the barge.
Had thought of lining the bottom 3.5 ft of all the walls with that Nascar Safer barrier material to cushion the shock of impacts when the race heated up and the white flag came out, but never did.
Actually, this passtime shared many similarities with Nascar. We had pit stops, made wedge adjustments, and occasionally the smell of burning rubber was in the air. Lug nuts took on a whole new meaning and she once dropped both of em when seeing a collision coming. I wasnt gonna tell it for fear ya all would see me as a wuss, but after too many head-on crashes the team decided she needed a helmet, and it always felt a little weird riding with her after that. Speaking of our team, were not organized & had no funding but it dint matter, we discussed it and felt no need for a crew chief or spotters.
Besides, after we went to the helmet & HANS Device, an 84 Lumber or Frosted Flakes/DieHard/Go Army theme on her rear quarter panels woulda taken away even more enjoyment for me in running a race.

A sad ending. Our race days are over. The ottoman was not included in the yard sale when fixin to move here from TX. We just dint feel it would be right to send a stranger away having purchased it without knowing its race record.
And about that time the ol lady started having trouble with her stabilizers and ended up in the shop getting a double knee replacement.
I have tried to encourage her that we should get another ottoman on wheels
and not necessarily have to run as many races but altleast run a few qualifying laps. I miss hitting that bump in the track going from linoleum to carpet. Wanna go try dirt track once on some washboard road. She aint havin no part of it though, and blames me for her stabilizers going out. I have to remind her that she was a willing member of the race team and I am sick of being the scapegoat. Maybe I did have something to do with that but I know the other stuff like mars in her bodywork, and her upholstery sagging & getting wrinkles aint on me dammit. I try to exonerate myself by dtracting her with facts like I never once had a slip up when we raced and checked her oil when I was getting back into the drivers seat after a wreck.

[squirrel hunter]

Had an ottoman on caster wheels in TX, gave the ol lady tours of the house on.
She was along for the ride, I powered it & steered.
I became quite proficient piloting the thing as time went on, and discovered the gear sequence, mastered the 2 speed reverse, and if I let my toenails grow long and curled my toes under found it had positraction and 4WD. The only glitch we encountered was when we were WOT the steering got erratic
and the ol lady would get mad if I accidently took her into the wall. Sheetrock had dents in it in various locations that matched up with the top of her head. Wanna really make her mad I'd take our craft and point it into a corner, and once wedged in there set the emergency brakes and work on it for a while. We had it on 2 wheels occasionally doing turns in too high of a gear and too much speed but never rolled it. Lived in a garage apartment and never had much of a straightaway, short course track you might say. Kitchen was long & narrow and ottoman barely fit when passing between fridge and stove, had to back out. The throttle stuck open once in there and thankfully at the end of the road a tall plastic garb can that held the dogfood rested, buffered the impact for her noggin. When the tour had reached its' apex and was over I often found myself on the floor collapsed next to the ottoman while the ol lady finally let her arm and leg muscles relax and she would be draped over it like a deer on the hood of a truck. Only linoleum was in the kitchen and step on the gas just a little and we were rolling but on the carpet I had to put it in a low gear and keep pressure on the accelerator. That kitchen was tricky, touch the brakes and she'd spin out from under me
and ya had a runaway train & have to go recouple the tugboat to the barge.
Had thought of lining the bottom 3.5 ft of all the walls with that Nascar Safer barrier material to cushion the shock of impacts when the race heated up and the white flag came out, but never did.
Actually, this passtime shared many similarities with Nascar. We had pit stops, made wedge adjustments, and occasionally the smell of burning rubber was in the air. Lug nuts took on a whole new meaning and she once dropped both of em when seeing a collision coming. I wasnt gonna tell it for fear ya all would see me as a wuss, but after too many head-on crashes the team decided she needed a helmet, and it always felt a little weird riding with her after that. Speaking of our team, were not organized & had no funding but it dint matter, we discussed it and felt no need for a crew chief or spotters.
Besides, after we went to the helmet & HANS Device, an 84 Lumber or Frosted Flakes/DieHard/Go Army theme on her rear quarter panels woulda taken away even more enjoyment for me in running a race.

A sad ending. Our race days are over. The ottoman was not included in the yard sale when fixin to move here from TX. We just dint feel it would be right to send a stranger away having purchased it without knowing its race record.
And about that time the ol lady started having trouble with her stabilizers and ended up in the shop getting a double knee replacement.
I have tried to encourage her that we should get another ottoman on wheels
and not necessarily have to run as many races but altleast run a few qualifying laps. I miss hitting that bump in the track going from linoleum to carpet. Wanna go try dirt track once on some washboard road. She aint havin no part of it though, and blames me for her stabilizers going out. I have to remind her that she was a willing member of the race team and I am sick of being the scapegoat. Maybe I did have something to do with that but I know the other stuff like mars in her bodywork, and her upholstery sagging & getting wrinkles aint on me dammit. I try to exonerate myself by dtracting her with facts like I never once had a slip up when we raced and checked her oil when I was getting back into the drivers seat after a wreck.

Planning on any more NOVELS today I could use another nap.