I’ve wanted to smoke my own food for a while, but lacked anywhere to build a smokehouse. Then I found a portable smoker, designed for fishermen who want to cook their catch on the river bank. LAst week I had a go at smoking salmon.

I took two fillets and halved them, then rolled them in a little sea salt. They’re laid out on the smoker’s grill tray in this shot.

The tray goes into the smoking box, but first the floor of the box is coated with smoking dust- basically sawdust by the look of it. With the fish in the box the lid slides on and closes tight.

The tub is then heated over a pot of methylated spirits. With the lid sealed the hot smoke from the wood dust cooks and coats the fish. I left it for as long as it took for all the meths to burn out, between fifteen and twenty minutes.

At first I thought I’d burnt the fish. However, that’s just the smokey coating.

Inside they were cooked through and succulent. The flavour’s mostly in the coating, and it’s very different to more traditionally slow smoked salmon. But very nice.

Later this week I’m going to experiment with smoking chicken.

I got my smoker from Clas Ohlson. If you don’t have access to their fine establishment you can get similar food smokers from Amazon.