Smoked Trout- Today On Mountain Kitchen

In our last episode of Mountain Kitchen, I made everyone a delicious plate of poison mushrooms, this time I'll show everyone how to ruin fresh trout. 

Okay, in all honesty, I had some help in this culinary misadventure. My dad and I were excited to smoke our trout and he was particularly excited to use a vinegar marinade. It seemed unusual to me but I decided to go along with it. So we popped two fish into a ziplock with rice vinegar and three into apple cider vinegar and left them in the fridge overnight.

 In the morning I was surprised to find that the fish looked like they'd been cooked already. Then I remembered the ceviche I'd had on the beach in Peru. Acid cooks things. Undaunted, I dragged out the smoker and wired the fish up by their heads like my dad had envisioned. This, too seemed a little iffy but I pressed on, loaded up the smoker, popped in a pan of hickory chips and plugged it in.

 

I was dismayed, yet not surprised a few hours later to find a mass fish decapitation on my hands. I scraped apart the pile of fish, installed the smoking racks, replaced the fish and refreshed the hickory chips. Two hours later, I pulled what remained from the trout crematorium and sat down for a taste test. After the mushroom incident, I was shocked when Jeff joined me. I wasn't surprised however when Zilla the cat joined us. Each of us took a small piece - mmmmm... smoked trout pickles! Note to self: no vinegar next time!