SMOKIN. wild caught coho salmon.

We met Kenny last week at the Fixin' To (one cool bar). He's Pizza Contadino's new best friend.  Kenny, the friendly stranger, is an Alaskan fisherman, new resident of St. Johns, and an awesome dude.  While enjoying a lovely evening at the bar, we got to talking about possibly purchasing some salmon from him later on down the road.  The next day Kenny stops by the cart in a hurry, on his way to Eugene, with three monster salmon - probably 40 lbs worth, and promptly runs off before we can even discuss compensation.  We'll get you back, dude!

Well, friends and pizza lovers, get ready for some smoked salmon pizza, pasta salads, and specials galore.  We've never smoked salmon before, but we gave it a try and it turned out great.  Especially considering our lack of experience, fillet knives, and actual smokers.

Here's how it all began...

Then we made the brine...

The salmon took a long luxurious bath....

Then it dried on our ridiculous system of cooling racks for a few hours.....

We MacGyver-ed a smoker out of a Weber grill, some tinfoil, and a tuna can....

Smoked it for about four hours and here you go!

Seriously folks, it's delicious.  We're pretty excited about how it turned out and about the fact that we'll be serving home-smoked fish straight from a neighbor who caught it himself.