This seems to be a controversial subject in Alaska. Most Alaskans have an opinion on what to do with fish once its come out of the water. Many anglers face the daunting task of dealing with 30 or more salmon after a full day of dipnetting or casting.
However once the salmon is caught, it’s imperative that the fish does not sit in water until you get home. If fish is kept in a cooler, make sure the cooler is drained every hour or so to keep the fish from swimming in a murky blood bath.
These suggestions for preserving and freezing fish are my best methods along with some tips from old timers and many forum discussions.
My method
At the fishing hole:
1. After the fish leaves the water, cut the gills to start bleeding the fish. This prolongs the freezing life of the filets.
2. Avoid unnecessary violence. Bruising and bumping the fish will damage its cellular tissue.
3. Keep the fish on ice and protected from seagulls. Make sure the ice melt can drain from the fish.
At home or processing site:
1. Rinse the whole fish with fresh water as completely as possible. Waiting to gut until you are home creates more mess but avoids sand in your filet. Gut the fish and remove the bloodline.
2. Filet salmon in your favorite style- I’ll discuss my method in another post. Pin-boning the salmon is easier to do once the fish has been frozen and thawed.
– It’s best to minimize the amount of fresh water you expose your fish to. Fresh water will enter the cells of the fish and upon freezing will rupture causing a softer texture. If possible rinse fish with a salt water brine instead. The theory behind brining is that the salt keeps the water from entering the salmon cells (something about osmosis) preventing crystallization of the flesh when freezing.
3. Create a brine of 1 gallon water to a half cup of salt. Rinse filleted salmon in the brine.
4. Pat dry filets and lay on cookie sheets or racks and freeze until stiff.
5. Vacuum seal filets that are nice and slime free. If you wish to put two fillets to a bag make sure the fish is packaged flesh to flesh avoiding contact with skin. This is also a good time to pre-season fish with a marinade or teriyaki.
6. Label and date making sure to use fish with any air or other packaging imperfections first.
Glaze method
This method forms an icy shell on the surface of the fish. It is similar to how you would purchase chicken breasts or other frozen meats from the grocery store.
1. Same process for steps 1-4 as above. Instead of vacuum sealing the fish, take the frozen filet and dip it in icy cold water.
2. Refreeze on the cookie sheet again until completely frozen and package in ziplock bags or in a food saver.
3. When defrosting, do not leave the fish sit in the glaze liquid.
Make sure you eat what you catch. Every year craiglist and the classifieds are filled with old, freezer burnt salmon. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of catching the fish, but extremely wasteful (and distasteful) throwing out the old fish every spring.
I’ll be posting recipes on using up year old salmon but some good bets are: salmon patties, smoked salmon, and salmon chowder.
When I was little and my mom was harvesting rhubarb she’d cut off all of the leaves and I’d take them and use them as doll-sized umbrellas, or make a little house for mice or fairies using the wide leaves for the roof. My mom’s rhubarb patch is over twenty years old and produces both mammoth stalks and prodigious yield. We’d happily eat rhubarb multiple times a week as most of the time it was fed to us in cobbler or pie form. In fact now that I think about it, rhubarb is one of the first things I can remember being allowed to dice up myself.
Rhubarb is a prolific Alaskan garden plant that can be grown in most northern climates. It needs plenty of rain and temperatures that consistently fall below 40°F in the winter. My mom’s secret to an impressive patch is to bury a couple of large starfish or sunstars (hopefully that you found already dead) about a foot and a half under the dirt beside the plants. This will provide fertilization for years to come. To start your own patch you will need root divisions taken from the crown of somebody else’s plant. Put them in the ground in early spring just after the ground becomes dig-able again. Once you have planted your starts, patience will be the name of the game. Don’t pick it for at least the first year (but waiting two-three years is better)!
After waiting so long harvesting can be a rewarding experience. Pull your chosen stalk away from the others and using a sharp knife cut at the base of the stalk. The ones you harvest should be between twelve and eighteen inches long and about an inch in diameter. If your stalks are thin you may not have enough nutrients in the soil. There isn’t much difference in taste between a green stalks and a ruby ones, but most people prefer red stalks for the bright pink color they add to baked goods. Remember to only take a few stalks at a time from each plant so that it will continue to grow.
It is extremely important when harvesting to know that the leaves are poisonous and should never be consumed! Among other things the leaves contain oxalic acid which is a nephrotoxin which can cause vomiting, breathing trouble, kidney failure, or a coma. One source even says to flush the area with water if it comes in contact with bare skin (it’s a wonder I survived childhood at all)!
One of my current obsessions are fruit shrubs. I have been using these for making salad dressings (which are delicious and putting them into cocktails! You can even use them simply as drinking vinegar and make refreshing drinks by adding 2 parts shrub to about 8 parts sparkling water. My favorite flavor so far is rhubarb shrub, although they can be made with just about any fruit. I have found that there are two main ways to make rhubarb shrub: the fast way and the slow way.
The year before last my brother and his wife decided that they wanted to start raising chickens. My brother is especially enamored with the idea of being self sufficient, he’s been telling me how much he wants a goat for years now. They built a cute little chicken coop next to their homey cabin on Douglas Island, Alaska and somehow managed to acquire a handful of Transylvanian Naked Neck chickens.
They were fairly good egg producers, and from what I was told they provided hours of entertainment to their keepers. One day in spring though, they were sitting in their cabin when all of a sudden they heard a ruckus outside. My brother ran out there and immediately saw their coop was under assault by a wily black bear. Now SE Alaska black bears aren’t necessarily anything to be worried about. Of course they can be aggressive and should be given a wide berth, but for the most part they are about the size of a large Newfie and fairly timid.
In this particular case my brother only had to pick up an old snow shovel and shake it a bit and the bear in question took off for the hills. There was however one casualty. The noble chicken Blackavar (Yes named from Watership Down). Somehow the bear had been able to get a hold of him and I don’t know whether the chicken died from a broken neck or maybe just from the sheer terror of getting caught by a large land predator, but Blackavar’s body was undamaged by the bear’s teeth or claws so he seemed in perfect condition to still be eaten.
In the end, when it came time to move out of that quaint little cabin I think they ended up giving away a couple of their chickens and eating the rest. Well, except for another one that also got caught by a black bear, but lets just say that one was not salvageable.
They moved out of their cabin, put almost all of their stuff into storage and set off on an amazing month long adventure to Hungary and Croatia. From which they brought my back a TON of different Hungarian paprikas. This plethora of paprika played heavily into my creation of this Chicken Paprikash recipe. My SIL just told me yesterday that they also had catfish paprikash while they were there which is definitely something I’ll have to try with some halibut or rockfish.
It’s trendy, it’s sustainable, it’s what we do up here. It’s the best feeling in the world pulling a crab pot over the side of a boat to discover what sort of creatures crawled in. The feeling of eating the catch fresh that day is close to indescribable. In a sentence, its the way food was meant to be eaten. We hope you will enjoy following us on our stories of life in Alaska and the journey of collecting, hunting, fishing, and growing our food.
We are both born and raised in Alaska, land of the midnight sun and fishing at 2am. We love to find new ways to use fresh ingredients or put a modern spin on an old Alaskan classic. We hope you will enjoy tasting Alaska.
1. Rinse the whole fish with fresh water as completely as possible. Waiting to gut until you are home creates more mess but avoids sand in your filet. Gut the fish and remove the bloodline.
We are both born and raised in Alaska, land of the midnight sun and fishing at 2am. We love to find new ways to use fresh ingredients or put a modern spin on an old Alaskan classic. We hope you will enjoy tasting Alaska.