Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Just a quick vid of the trout feeding today. Their heads must be sore from hitting the mesh every morning

LOL, maybe that is why some people go to the trouble of building a "DOME" cover for their fish tanks.

Bought a cheap Weber on the weekend and smoked my first trout! They were only 330g, so hopefully this will give the rest of them a chance to grow bigger.

I soaked them in a brine for 7 hrs, and then smoked them for an hr, turning and adding more wood chips at 30 mins. They were the best smoked trout I've ever tasted - the juicy, smoky taste was amazing. I'll be doing trout next year for sure.

There was huge ammonia spike in the afternoon though. Hopefully that's just due to them literally crapping themselves. I did a 1/3rd water change anyway, just in case.

Awesome!!!!

Might have to borrow your smoker setup then

Nicely done, Fuzz. Looks like an easy smoker solution too.

Looks great Fuzzmonkey. Smoked trout is so tasty isn't it? I just had some for lunch too.

The BBQ only cost $20 off Gumtree. Worth every cent.

I had a smoked trout from a restaurant in Pemberton a few weeks ago. Although I might be a bit biased, I'd say mine was much nicer

Caught and smoked 8 more today.

Smoking is addictive!

$20 nice that's cheaper then a blue barrel

Can you help a lad out with smoking?
we have only hot smoked but your's look like a longer process?

These were hot smoked using the Weber BBQ. I over smoked these though compared the first batch - the flesh had that dry texture you get with over steamed fish.

I got the general technique from the internet, which is basically:
1. Catch, kill, clean & scale fish;
2. Soak in a brine of rock salt, brown sugar and water for several hours (mine were in for 7 hours);
3. Smoke for 60 mins, adding more wood chips every 15m and turning the fish at 30m.

Next time I'll reduce the smoking time to 45 mins and put a knife through the thick parts to see if it's cooked through.

Even if the Restaurant cooks the fish perfectly, they can't possibly provide you with as fresh a product as you can get for yourself! The Restaurant has to buy the fish from somewhere else which probably catches a huge amount of fish and loads them into some sort of transport (where they will be super stressed out or if they are killed on the way into the transport they are dead and being transported, hopefully chilled.) Then they go to some sort of processing facility (in some cases the processing facility is attached to the fish farm so the transport from catch to processing might not be that far but other times it would be a truck ride.) Then from the processing facility it has to get transported again (either fresh but chilled to appropriate safe temperature or frozen) either directly to the Restaurant (best case) or to a market or distrobution facility where it might get re-packed onto a different truck to go to the Restaurant (next best) or it sits at market waiting for a buyer to pick out the order and from there it goes to the Restaurant.

Growing and preparing you own is ALWAYS going to be fresher even if you wind up freezing it for a time before you get around to cooking/eating it.

Thanks for the great description of the food logistical chain. It is one of the issues that motivated me to start looking around for alternative ways to feed my family. One of the biggest events was when they found horse meat in the beef in Europe. I wasn't particularly freaked out by that but I read a very enlightening article where the write explained in detail how complex our food logistical chains have become. Complexity breeds instability and loss of control. So he felt that what happened to the horse meat would start happening more and more around the world due to the complexity of the systems. I agree with that.

We have become very dependent on systems which we don't see and cannot control and we expect them to keep working flawlessly while we know nothing about them. We don't really know where our food is coming from or how it has been treated.

That was one of my main reasons to start pursuing food independence. I have not achieved it yet but I at least have that as a goal now.

The other issue which really struck a nerve with me was when I read (I can't remember the source but I remember it was a credible one) that from seed to your plate most vegetables are sprayed with poison around 17 times. That really creeped me out.

So closer to home and fresher is always a great outcome in my humble opinion.

Regards, Martin.

Fuzzymonkey, I am not happy. You have given me a real craving for smoked trout and I don't know where to find some!

Regards, Martin.

TCLynx: Very true, particularly with fresh fish. Now to work out how to grow pigs aquaponically so that I can have fresh bacon ...

Martin: That's easy - grow and smoke your own