It’s salmon season up here in Fairbanks. My husband Joel came home about a week ago with 28 sockeye/red salmon from the Copper River! This year in addition to smoking and kippering the fillets myself, which I’ve written about before here, I decided to do something with the salmon eggs as well. I might have mentioned before how much I liked smoked foods such as cookies, flour, sugar, and salmon amongst other things, so I decided, of course, I should smoke the salmon eggs as well.
Now normally, I cold smoke my foods but here is the kicker with salmon and salmon eggs, they have tapeworms. Gross, I know, but it’s a fact so I have to deal with the tapeworm issue first. With the fillets it’s easy, freeze them for a couple of weeks if I’m cold smoking or heat them to 160F by cooking or hot smoking and I’m good to go. But salmon eggs are a bit fussier to deal with. The tapeworm is in the skein around the eggs so I have to remove it and for good measure brine it in salt. For this recipe, I followed the University of Alaska Cooperative Extensions recipe for salt brining and removing the skein followed by my own recipe for smoking. Here is the original cooperative extension recipe for ‘Salmon Roe Caviar’ if you don’t want the eggs smoked, but I think you should really smoke them. And here is my recipe below.
Smoked Salmon Roe
An intense smoky salty treat made from Salmon Roe.
Instructions
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Make a salt brine of 8 cups of cold water to 3/4 cup of salt. Stir the salt into the water thoroughly.
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Place your whole salmon skeins of fish eggs into a large bowl and use enough of the salt brine to cove the skeins up. Brine for 5 minutes. This will allow the eggs to toughen up a bit and keep from popping in the next step.
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Drain the salt brine out of the fish skeins and discard the brine.
Removing the Skein
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For this step do one skein at a time completely before going to the next skein. Split a skein of eggs open lengthwise using your thumb. Place the skein, egg side down on a very large holed strainer or even better, a rack from a food dehydrator tray or a tennis racket set over a large bowl. Place your palm on top of the skein and firmly but without squishing the eggs or pushing the skein through the holes, rub the skein back and forth on the tray. The eggs should start falling through the tray into the bowl below. When the skein starts sticking and threatening to fall through the holes, peel the skein off the tray and discard it. You don't want the skein in your fish eggs. Don't worry you'll have another chance to remove the small bits of skein later. Also don't worry if you discard a few fish eggs.
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Once all the skeins are removed, make a new salt brine of 2 cups of water to 1/2 cup of salt for every 2 cups of fish eggs you have. If you have more then two cups of fish eggs make more salt brine using this ratio. Place your skeinless eggs into this new salt brine and swirl gently. Brine for 30 minutes. If you like your food less salty I'd suggest brining for only 15 minutes.
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Drain the eggs through a medium-mesh sieve, something small enough that the eggs can't fall through the holes. Working with small amounts of eggs is easiest but if they fit you can dump all the eggs in the sieve at once. Run cold water over the eggs while swirling the eggs gently around the sieve with your hand. As you swirl, pick out any large chunks of skeins you might have missed. You won't be able to pick out all the tiny pieces off skein but as you swirl the eggs with your hand you'll notice a lot of the skein sticks to your hand and the mesh of the sieve. Rinse your hand with water occasionally, not over the clean eggs, to rinse the skein off that sticks to your hand. Continue rinsing until you feel almost all the skein bits are gone from the eggs and are stuck to the sides of the mesh sieve.
Smoking
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Place the clean eggs in a dish about a half an inch thick. You can sprinkle the eggs with sugar or drizzle with honey if you like your smoked food sweeter. Cold smoke the eggs for 6 hours. If you like your food less smoky half the time, if you are using a strong wood like alder to smoke, or alternatively use a more mild smoking wood such as apple and smoke for the whole 6 hours.
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Refrigerate the eggs for up to three weeks or freeze up to six months.
If you don’t already have a smoker for this recipe, cold smokers are very easy to make. You can make them out of almost anything. You can read about my favorite DIY smoker design here. So, anyway, there was the recipe, and here are some photos to help out.
Whole skeins. 
Rub the skein on the drying rack so the eggs fall into a bowl below. Remove the skein when it starts sticking and threatening to fall through.
After brining for the second time rinse in cold water. 
Remove any large chunks of skein you see from the top, white stuff in the photo.
The skein will stick to your hand as you rinse the eggs. 
Skein bits will also stick to the sieve. 
The white pieces of skein.
Prior to smoking 
Post-smoking. Slightly less oily. It also develops a rind on top. That’s ok.
There you go. I feel it was easier to do than describe. I plan to use the salmon roe on bagels with homemade goat cheese, smoked salmon pasta, and salmon chowder.
