The last couple of weeks we have been eating a toast with smoked trout or mackerel from the supermarket for lunch quite often. In itself delicious, but I thought it could be better when making them from scratch. So why not brine a mackerel filet and smoke it myself? Wouldn’t that make a delicious toast? At lidl they seem to read my mind, cause while the plan was hatching, Lidl coincidentally started selling mackerel filet the next day. Seems to be the sign I needed to kick of this project and fire up the traeger to make some home smoked mackerel filet. And guess what! It’s bloody easy to make with no more than 5 ingredients and done in less than 4 hours (brining included)! So what are you waiting for? Time to kickstart your Q and start smoking!
Disclaimer: Recipe for @lidlbelgium. All opinions expressed are personal and sincere.
Wet brined smoked mackerel fillet
Equipment
- BBQ with lid
- Smokewood or pellets
- brining jar
Ingredients
- 400 gr mackerel fillet
For the brine
- 750 ml water
- 40 gr salt
- 1 handful of chopped dill
- 1 handful of minced mint
Instructions
Brine
- Finely chop the herbs and mix together with the water and salt to a large bowl. Bring to a boil until the salt has dissolved.
- Leave to cool and add the mackerel fillet. Make sure the fillets are completely covered under the brine.
- Allow the mackerel fillet to brine for an hour and a half, remove from the brine and pat dry.
Smoke time
- While the fillets are drying you start up the BBQ for an indirect session at low temperature (75°C-100°C max). I use the traeger pellet grill with the texas beef blend. If you use a different type of bbq, add some chunks of smokewood between the coals.
- Smoke the mackerel fillet with the skin side down for 1 to 1.5 hours. You will see that they start to get a nice golden/purple color and become firmer in texture. When the first proteins start to coagulate (small drops of white form on the fish) they are ready and you remove them from the BBQ.