Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

Hot-smoked kippered salmon is a thing of beauty. Tender and succulent , seasoned with salt, sugar, and smoke—it’s one of the best ways to eat salmon. Unfortunately, most people have only ever eaten it cold, or flaked into cream cheese. The best way to eat hot hot-smoked salmon is to make it yourself.But hot-smoking salmon is hard. You need to know your way around a smoker, and you need to be careful with temperature control, both for the internal temp of the salmon fillets and in the smoking chamber itself, or else you’ll end up with tough and leathery salmon jerky.Our method makes it easy: Cure the salmon to season it and firm up its texture, then cook it perfectly using sous vide. Once it dries off a little, give it a quick cold-smoke, then pop it into a moderately hot oven to warm it up before serving. While you compromise a little on the smoke flavor—a cold-smoked piece of fish won’t have as much smoky flavor as a hot-smoked piece of fish, which is why we hedge a little with the liquid smoke—what little you lose in smokiness you more than make up for with the perfect internal temp. The cooked and smoked salmon on the plate looks and tastes just like a beautifully hot-smoked piece of fish—a little sweet, pleasantly salty, with just the right amount of smoke flavor. Cut into it and you’ll see that it’s not just beautifully smoked, it’s also perfectly cooked.

Succulent Hot-Smoked Salmon