NOVA LOX (aka. Cold Smoked Salmon)

Hello, here you have barbecue and bottles and today we are going to make Nova locks. Nova locks are very similar to Gravlax or just locks, the only difference is that once we cure it in the refrigerator for 48 hours, we will then

cold

smoke it. So if you like that kind of thing hit the like button consider subscribing to the channel and stick around for the recipe so this recipe is really simple and simple all you'll need is a little bit of jaggery a little of kosher salt and, most importantly. the star of the show is just a really good cut of

salmon

and we went to our local fishmonger and bought sashimi grade

salmon

.

Here you can see there's some amazing marbling on this and that's where you really want to invest in this recipe is just making sure. You will get high quality fish because we will basically eat it raw. Another big plus of this recipe is how much cheaper it is to make at home than going out and buying

cold

smoked

salmon or Nova locks or it blocks itself and in this recipe we are going to show you at what point you can stop and start cutting this to create locks or you can continue with the cold smoke and do Nova locks like we will do today.

Let's leave the salmon aside and we'll do the cure, so it's very easy. The cure, all we need is for every two pounds of fish you're going to want a quarter cup of sugar and a quarter cup of kosher salt, so we have a little over four pounds of salmon, which means we'll use a cup of each one, so that's it. Now just mix this together and what you want to do is make sure you get the brown lumps. no sugar so it's a nice even mixture so now that we're done mixing we've got it good and even one thing you can do at this stage is add aromatics you can add classic ingredients for Nova strands or strands like dill. thyme rosemary zest of one lemon we're going to keep it nice and simple here and show you that, right?

All you really need for this is two ingredients and about 48 hours of time, so what do you want? What we do is we lay down a base layer like this as best we can and this is where we'll start to prepare a surface for the salmon. What we're going to do here is take about half of our mixture and just drop it in. this down on the bottom and we want to place it in a way that's consistent with the side of the salmon that we have because we're going to place it on top here once we're done now we're just going to place the fish down here skin side down perfect now we're just going to use the rest of the cure and sprinkle it evenly over the top now that we've got it covered and to be clear I mean we covered not only the surface in terms of the top and the bottom, but the sides here as well.

Now we are ready to wrap this and put it in the refrigerator to cure for 48 hours. We'll just take the saran wrap and pack it as tight as we can. Now if you have a vacuum sealer you can use that at this stage and we realize that not everyone has one of those at home so we just wanted to show you a more simplified recipe here with things you probably have lying around. kitchen, now that you have it wrapped, you're just going to transfer it to a cookie sheet or a baking sheet like that, so it's very important to have the fish on top of a baking sheet like this because the salt and the sugar is going to eliminate a ton of moisture from this salmon, it will no longer feel like it has that raw texture and all that liquid will be inside the saran wrap, this is not perfectly sealed and therefore naturally some of its I'm going to skip it and you want to have a tray so your refrigerator doesn't turn into a mess of fish and salmon juices, so let's transfer this to the refrigerator so that it's 48 hours later and the same thing is ready to come out of the refrigerator, so let's go.

Do it now, one important step I forgot to mention is that you need to put something heavy on the salmon while it sits in the refrigerator and cures. We just used a couple extra Tupperware containers here and then just put some dough in to weigh it out. Turn it down and apply a little extra force and that just helps get the liquid out of the salmon as it cures during the 48 hour cure, you can see a lot of juice has come out of the salmon. It is cured in the refrigerator for 48 hours and when you touch it you can really feel some firmness to the fish.

Now it's not just that raw salmon place that we have, you can really feel that it's starting to have that touch of

smoked

salmon and Nova LOX. so I recommend you do this over the sink, just throw away the juice that actually came out of the fish again. That's why you want to use a baking sheet when you're making your cure to catch all that juice you don't want that at the bottom of your refrigerator after two days. Now we will give it a good rinse. You want to get all that excess curing out of here, otherwise it's going to be too salty.

Yes, both sides will receive the skin side. perfect meat side here we go so now we're just going to transfer this to a drying or cooling rack we're going to take some paper towel and you're going to want to get all the excess moisture off of this so at this stage actually you have locks or gravlax and if you want you can start cutting the salmon. Now skip to the end of the video if you want to stop here and we'll show you how to cut it so you get those perfect ones. Wafer thin clear slices that you get at the supermarket or deli anyway, but obviously what we're going to do here is Nova locks, that's where we actually cold smoke this for 24 hours, so what we're going to want What we do before we cold smoke is we put it back in the refrigerator for half an hour and what will happen is a thin, almost sticky or sticky film will form on the surface of the salmon called I think it's a film or a sill of Pella and that when we take it to the smoker afterwards, that will really help the smoke flavor adhere to the salmon and really impart that smoky flavor that we're looking for in a

nova

LOX, so we'll just put this in the refrigerator and we'll be fine.

I will come back in half an hour. Okay, we've had this in the refrigerator for half an hour and you can start to feel that sticky film forming on the outside of this salmon, so we're just going to stick it on. this aside and we're using our 34 Pro trigger for this one and for this we're going to use this smoking pipe. This is a great little thing whether you're just using a gas grill and want to add a little bit of smoke flavor or if you're cold smoking with your trigger this tool is perfect for that so let's just grab a few of our normal trigger hickory pellets here, just load the tube and we don't need this. full, we only need this halfway, halfway up the tube, just like that and that's all we need for this smoke, so let's put the lid down and now let's get the grill ready to turn your trigger into a cold smoker. remove this right here and we're just going to remove the drip tray.

Now, what we are going to do. We have our Burns O Matic torch here. Be sure to turn on the gas. Now we are cooking there. We just want to get one. One of these ends lit up this perfect and it's going to light up and be the source of smoke for the entire chamber here, so we're going to put that on this end now, now we're just going to put the grill grate back on. we just let our salmon rest there, now we are doing this in late spring and the overnight temperatures will still be cool enough that we can have a fish outside in the smoker and not have to worry about the heat going through it, so we'll just close the lid here and let it sit overnight, check again in the morning and see if it's imparted the smoky flavor and flavor that we're looking for. for the salmon, as you will see, we place the smoking tube on the left side of the trigger and that will allow the smoke to rise through the fish.

Make sure we are connected to deliver the flavor profile we are looking for. because before the smoke comes out of the chimney, you should always make sure that the smoke source is on the far side of the grill in relation to the chimney and that you place the protein in the middle. Now it's time to check it in the morning. the salmon, you see, what we had was a little bungee cord here wrapped around the trigger leg and then the handle of the lid and that was just to keep the raccoons away. We have a lot of wildlife in our backyard. where we live and we just want to make sure that they don't get to this salmon overnight, well look at that beautiful color, we pulled the salmon out of the smoker this morning and we officially have Novalog sitting in front of us.

Again, the difference between smoked salmon and Nova LOX is that Nova LOX was actually cold smoked a little bit, so we had a little over 12 hours of cold smoking which you can see here and the meat of the salmon really turned out like that of beautiful. smoky color I wish you could smell it in the kitchen here it smells amazing. We've got that hickory smoked on a bun. No, that's just coming out of this. Now the most important part is to simply cut it. You need a long knife. A long knife for carving. or a brisket knife Now, if you are sharpening a rod, be sure to clean the knife afterward.

You don't want any of those little metal fragments or micro metal dusts getting into your food. Now to cut, you'll want to start at the tail. first and keep the knife very, very flat, you don't want to shave here and try to get slices that are thin so the first couple that come off won't work, you have to. You actually get into the meat of the fish here before you can start getting the wafer thin slices, so you'll want to be able to see the knife through the fish as you cut it and that's how you'll know you've got the right thickness. or thinness, so you see here, you can get a really nice thin translucent piece of Nova LOX and what we're doing is we're just putting them in a glass Tupperware here, so we're going to put a thin layer on and then we're going to put some paper parchment on top, we will put another layer and repeat until we finish cutting this whole fish.

That way we can throw it in the freezer, it will freeze perfectly and we can take out a layer. of parchment at a time and let it fly out instead of having to take it all out of the refrigerator and thinking that we're not going to be able to get through so many Nova locks at once. Wow, if you get a piece like this and it has a little bit of red vein on the bottom, just take the tip of your carving knife and pull it out like this and keep moving like this, look that way. thin, you can see through it like a window.

Now as you go up the side of the fish, it's going to be easier to get those bigger slices, so check this out now, all you need is some bagel, some cream cheese, a red onion, chives and they'll be ready to go so friends if you like this video please give it a like below consider subscribing to the channel and we'll see in the next one this is how to do it without Velox at home why don't you do it? This is a go, it's one of the few recipes where it's much cheaper to make it yourself at home and honestly let's do the taste test and see how it actually turned out mmm that's absolutely amazing you get a much better result when Make this at home instead of buying it from the store.

Make sure you get a high-quality piece of salmon. You will love this recipe. Thanks for tuning in.