Tinapa

Fish brined, dried to a tacky skin, then hot-smoked until it is cooked and keeps.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 8 whole fish, about 250 g each, gutted and scaled
• 150 g salt, for the brine, which is discarded
• 2 litres water, for the brine
• 2 tablespoons sugar, for the brine
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 4 handfuls hardwood chips or sawdust
• 1 handful rice, for the smoke

Method

1. THE PELLICLE IS THE WHOLE TRICK, and it is the step nobody is told about. After brining, the fish must be dried in moving air until the surface is TACKY rather than wet -- touch it and your finger should pull slightly. Smoke sticks to a tacky surface and runs straight off a wet one, so fish smoked undried comes out pale and tasting of nothing.
2. Two to three hours on a rack in front of a fan does it, or overnight uncovered in the fridge.
3. This is the third preserved fish on the site and the only smoked one: the tuyo is dried hard and salty, the daing is split and soured in vinegar, and this is brined and smoked and stays moist.
4. Dissolve the salt and sugar in the water with the peppercorns. Brine the fish 2 hours for 250 g fish, no longer -- over-brined, the flesh goes firm and overwhelming and the smoke cannot be tasted past it.
5. Lift the fish out, throw the brine away, and rinse them briefly under a cold tap. The brine is not reused and not eaten -- almost all of that salt goes down the sink, and what stays in the fish is a fraction of it.
6. Set up a hot smoker: chips and the handful of rice in the bottom of a heavy lidded pot or wok lined with foil, a rack above them, the lid on. The rice helps the chips smoulder rather than flare.
7. Heat until the chips smoke steadily, then the fish on the rack in a single layer, not touching.
8. SMOKE 25 TO 30 MINUTES at a low heat. This is hot smoking, so the fish cooks as it smokes and comes out ready to eat.
9. It is done when the skin is deep gold-brown and the flesh at the thickest point flakes under a fork.
10. Cool completely before wrapping. Keeps a week refrigerated. Eaten as it is with rice and vinegar, or flaked into fried rice.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes