smoked salmon

Dunkeld's Best in Class Smoked Salmon

Filed under: Dining

In my opinion few things compare to the taste of freshly caught seafood, that is until I discovered the taste of a freshly smoked fish. In the ancient cathedral town of Dunkeld on the banks of one of Scotland's most renown fishing rivers, the River Tay, is an artisan smokehouse that has for over 30 years prepared and smoked the steady flow of anglers' catches.

When you buy smoked salmon at a supermarket, what you're getting is a highly processed fish, manufactured in a rapid process that can take anywhere from six hours to a day from smoking to packaging. At Dunkeld Smokehouse, using traditional methods, the actual smoking process takes up to four days. Guests are invited to bring in their salmon catch whole at the end of their fishing day. Each fish is individually tagged and prepared to order. The salmon is hand cured in salt for up to a day and dry smoked in kilns using recycled whisky barrel chips from local distilleries for another day. After the smoking process, the salmon fillets are left to chill and mature for a further two days. Hot smoked salmon, another option, is smoked in a hot kiln, and the result is a flakier cooked fish. Customers can also request gravadlax, in which fillets are cured for five days in dill, salt, sugar and pepper.

Tags: dunkeld, salmon, scotland, scottish food, smoked salmon