Cold Smoked Salmon | Step by Step Tutorial and Recipe

Follow this easy, step-by-step process to make delicious cold smoked salmon at home. It tastes so much better than store-bought, and there are many different ways to enjoy it!

This post was originally published in April 2021. In February 2025, we updated the post to make it easier to read, and also added a recipe card.

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My husband has perfected the method and recipe for cold smoking salmon. He uses wild-caught salmon that he catches off the Northern California coast.

You will love the taste and texture of cold-smoked salmon! It is fantastic as part of a German breakfast, on a sourdough bagels, or for dinner with a side of rotkohl (braised red cabbage), or in smoked salmon tartlets.

Like our smoked trout dip recipe, the salmon can also be used to make a delicious dip!

Salmon is a superfood filled with beneficial omega-3 oils and vitamins, along with a high protein level that is similar to ground beef.

Hot Smoked Versus Cold Smoked Salmon

Cold smoked salmon is a preparation where the fish is cured with salt and flavored with smoke. The fish remains raw; however, curing it with salt preserves it, so it is safe to eat. So, unless you are particularly sodium-sensitive, you will likely enjoy cold smoked salmon!

Lox and gravlax are dishes where the fish is cured with salt, but it is not smoked.

In comparison, hot smoking is a process where the salmon is cooked by heat. The cooking is done on an outdoor smoker (or with a grill and smoking tube).

Ingredients

• Frozen or previously frozen salmon: You can smoke a whole salmon, but the process is much easier using smaller fillets.
• Salt: We recommend using either regular sea salt or kosher salt. We do not use curing salt, as it contains additives such as nitrates, which we like to avoid. For a similar reason, we do not use iodized table salt.
• Sugar: Using just a small amount of light brown sugar improves the overall flavor of the dish.

Our curing recipe is 12% (by weight) of salt and 12% (by weight) of brown sugar. For this smoked fish recipe, we use 2 pounds (32 ounces) of fish, 1 cup of salt, and 1 cup of brown sugar.

Making Cold Smoked Salmon

This is just a summary of the steps involved. For the full instructions, see the recipe card further down in this post.

1. Wash the salmon. This helps flush out any bacteria that might have accumulated.
2. Make the curing solution. Weigh your piece(s) of salmon. Calculate 12% of that weight, and use that amount of salt and the same amount of brown sugar.
3. Place the brine in a vacuum sealable bag or non-reactive container. Glass and ceramic are good examples of non-reactive containers.

4. Cure the salmon fillets. Seal the bag/container and cure in the fridge for 48 hours.

5. Fill the smoke generator: Place the sawdust in the smoke generator. Make sure to have the metal rings exposed so that the embers don’t jump over.

6. Rinse the salmon and place it in the smoker. Take the salmon out of the vacuum bag or dish and rinse it well under running tap water. Most likely, it will have lost 12% or so of its weight. Place it on the rack of the cold smoking chamber.

7. Fire up the smoke generator. Light the smoke generator at one end and/or also in the center. We use lighter fluid to jumpstart it. Place the generator at the bottom of the smoke chamber.
8. Put the fillets in the smoking chamber and cold-smoke the salmon. Keep it in a cool place, ideally below 60˚F. Check every so often that the smoke is still going. You can leave it in there from 3 to 48 hours or longer. It will be good regardless. We typically smoke for about 12 hours.

Helpful Tips and Notes

• You can buy sawdust or make your own from wood pellets. Making it yourself is more economical. Depending on how much you pay for the wood pellets, it costs less than $1 to smoke a piece of salmon. To learn how to make sawdust from wood pellets, see instructions just below the recipe card at the bottom of this post.
• If you plan to make your own sawdust, it’s best done during warm weather months. Store the sawdust in airtight bins, and it will stay perfect for use all the way through the cooler months of the year.
• You can cold smoke your salmon and freeze it for several months. We don’t notice any difference in taste or texture after freezing and thawing.
• Feel free to cut off the darker parts of the salmon. They taste fine, but don’t look as appealing.
• Make sure you have a good, sharp knife for thinly slicing the smoked fish.

Fish bones make delicious broth. Here’s a tutorial on how to make homemade bone broth.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

How to Make Sawdust from Wood Pellets

This process is messy, but it’s an economical option.

1. Place the wood pellets in a large bin or bucket and cover with water. Let this sit for a few hours or longer.
2. Mash the pellets and squeeze excess water out of the wood “mush”.
3. Place the mash on a tray in the sun to dry it out. Stir it occasionally to dry it thoroughly. This can take a few days, depending on the temperature and how much sun it gets.

Thoughts on Smoking Cured Salmon

The key to cold-smoked salmon is to expose the cured fish to smoke. Fish will begin to cook at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit. To prevent it from cooking, we use a smoke generator along with sawdust, because it retains much heat.

You can place this inside your smoke box since it produces very little heat. The smokebox can be any compartment in which the smoke or air can enter, accumulate, smoke the meat, and then exit. The airflow keeps the sawdust embers lit. A slightly open barbecue grill or even a cardboard box works well, too.

Within the smoke chamber, the cured salmon needs to either hang or sit on wire grates so that smoke can surround the meat.

Smoking will also act to preserve the meat further by dehydration and lowering the pH at the meat’s surface. We smoke our salmon from 6 to 24 hours but typically only 12 hours or so. Filling our smoke generator 1/2 way achieves this. If you are starting out, we recommend lighting only one end of the smoke generator. Later, you might like to light it at the center and the end, as we sometimes do, for a shorter but more intense smoke.