Making cold smoked lox at home is something I wanted to do for a long time so I went looking on the Internet to find a good recipe. This recipe is one I modified and it uses liquid smoke flavoring to create cured cold smoked salmon (Lox), not cooked smoked salmon.
Note that lox is raw fish that has been cured with a salt and sugar mixture. And it is delicious! Use pieces of it with cream cheese, thin onion slices and maybe also capers on crackers or inside a cut bagel. Sometimes I use thinly sliced shallots instead of onion slices. Whatever way you serve it you can count on it being delicious.
Here is a quick recipe for making a fine hors d'ouvre with your lox ... Put 8 ounces of room temperature cream cheese into an electric mixer. Add 2 tbsp. of heavy cream. Mix on low speed for two minutes. Use a spatula to scrape down the inside of the mixing bowl and mix again for two minutes. Add 1/2 cup of finely diced sweet onion and 1/3 cup of capers, then mix on low speed for two minutes. Use the spatula to scrape down the inside of the mixing bowl and again mix for two minutes. Serve this spread in a bowl along with a knife for spreading it on crackers. Cut about 1 lb. of 1/8" thick lox slices into 2" long pieces and arrange the pieces on a plate, along with a fork. Serve a bowl of club crackers or the crackers of your choice. Spread the cream cheese mixture on a cracker, about 1/4" thick, then put on a piece of lox, then enjoy! These are delicious and easy to make and eat (they don't fall apart). Do not make the hors d'ouvres in advance of when you plan to eat them, for the moisture from the cream cheese mixture will make the crackers soggy/soft.
I was so impressed by the ease of making lox and the perfect quality that I decided to look for a variety of different sandwich recipes to demonstrate how this seafood has true versatility. You can look in the Food Nirvana section on Sandwich Stuff and find the Lox Sandwich Variations recipe ingredients. It is definitely worth the read.
Ingredients:
1 pound of fresh salmon fillet, skin on and any bones removed
½ cup of Kosher salt
½ cup of brown sugar (packed)
1 tbsp. of Wright's® hickory flavored liquid smoke
Directions:
Rinse the salmon fillet with water, then pat it dry with paper towels and lay it on a plate.
Wet the top and side surfaces (but not the skin) of the salmon fillet with the hickory flavored liquid smoke.
Whisk the salt and sugar together in a bowl.
Lay out an 18" long piece of 12" wide plastic wrap on a counter.
Pour half of the salt and sugar mixture onto the middle of the plastic wrap, covering an area the size of the salmon fillet, then lay the salmon fillet on top, skin side down.
Cover the top and sides of the salmon fillet with the remaining salt and sugar mixture.
Fold the plastic wrap around the salmon making it tight, then wrap a second layer of plastic wrap around it.
Vacuum seal the packaged salmon and simply refrigerate it, or alternatively, put it into a Ziploc® plastic bag and seal the bag after expelling most of the air. Then put the bag into a glass casserole and weigh it down with a second smaller casserole that has anything heavy in it, like two large cans of plum tomatoes.
Refrigerate the salmon for two days while it is curing, turning it over twice per day.
Unwrap the cold smoked salmon and rinse the cure mixture from it using cold water at your sink faucet.
You now have Cold Smoked Lox. But you need to soak it in batches of cold water for 30 minutes to elimate the cure from the surface completely.
Put one quart of cold water into a two quart bowl.
Place the lox into the water and keep it submerged for 10 minutes. Repeat this two times with fresh cold water.
Remove the lox from the water, rinse it and pat it dry with paper towels.
Put the lox on a wood cutting board.
The final step in preparing the lox is to cut very thin slices of it away from the skin. And then discard the skin.
Cut the lox fillet with a very sharp 10" or 12" long knife crossways starting from the thin edge (tail) and cutting toward the thick edge, on a 15 to 20 degree angle from the horizontal, keeping the slices no more than 1/8" to 3/16" thick. Do not cut into the skin. Do not remove any slices (intentionally) until the entire fillet has been cut. Then cut off individual slices by holding the knife flat against the bottom of the lox, between it and the skin, and gently slice the lox to free the individual slices of lox from the skin. Cut away and discard any edge of tan flesh from each piece, then put the lox pieces on a plate. Discard the skin.
Vacuum seal the lox (or wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and put it inside a sealable plastic bag) and refrigerate the slices in multiple packages so you can use a little at a time and keep the remainder fresh. Use the refrigerated lox within two weeks or freeze it for up to three months. Note, if you decide to freeze it, do it between sheets of parchment paper on a baking tray until it is frozen. Then vacuum seal or wrap and bag the frozen pieces of lox and put the bags back into the freezer until you want to use them.
Enjoy!