Harris Smokehouse Wild Smoked Salmon 100g

Harris Smokehouse Wild Smoked Salmon, 100g. Cold smoked Canadian sockeye, sliced and ready to eat.

The smoke

This is the part that matters. The salmon is salted first — less for flavour than to firm the flesh, because unsalted fish goes soft in the smoker — then cold smoked for a full 24 hours over the smokehouse's own oak blend. Cold smoking means the fish is never cooked. It takes on smoke at low temperature and stays silky and translucent, which is why it slices the way it does.

Twenty-four hours is a long, slow smoke, and the result is not what most people expect. It comes out rich and sweet rather than sharp, and noticeably less oily than the farmed Atlantic salmon in supermarket packs. Sockeye is a leaner fish to begin with, and a slow smoke concentrates it rather than smothering it.

The fish

Wild caught Canadian sockeye, Oncorhynchus nerka, from an MSC certified sustainable fishery. Wild caught, not farmed. The colour is the fish's own — sockeye is naturally this deep red, where farmed salmon is fed a pigment to get there.

Three ingredients: salmon, salt, oak smoke. Nothing added for colour, nothing added to preserve it.

The smokehouse

Harris Smokehouse is a fourth generation family business in the Adelaide Hills. The family has been smoking fish for more than fifty years, starting in Suffolk in England. Richard and Valerie Harris brought the trade to South Australia in 1990, and their son Adam opened Harris Smokehouse at Mount Barker in 2009 — still using the slicer his parents carried out from England.

How to eat it

Straight from the pack is the honest answer. On rye with capers, lemon and a grind of pepper. Folded through scrambled eggs off the heat so it does not cook further. Over a potato salad, or simply on a board with bread and butter. Because it is leaner than farmed salmon it needs less help — don't drown it in cream cheese.

Keep it refrigerated at or below 4°C and eat it within two to three days of opening.

Available at Leichhardt and Crows Nest, or for Sydney delivery.