Tea Smoked Fish

We love smoked fish and couldn’t find any in Langkawi, where we were anchored. So we set about making some. We had a couple of problems to overcome before making our smoked fish. The first was we didn’t have a smoker, and the second – we could not find any hickory wood chips (or similar) on the island.

Not usually one to be deterred from doing something just because it is not straightforward, Dwayne set about thinking about how to make an easy smoker. He devised something we could use on the beach: two aluminium foil trays, some bulldog clips and a rack.

In the meantime, I decided we could use a tea mixture instead of wood chips as the smoking mix. And set about making something that may just add a delicious flavour to our fish.

Table of Contents

This is what we came up with…

For the smoker

2 aluminium foil trays
6 bulldog clips
1 oven rack or trivet
1 empty beer can
white spirits (metho)
sand
(or coals or wood for a fire*)

For the tea mixture

1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
2 clove
1 cup of uncooked rice
1/2 cup of tea
1/4 cup sugar

For the fish

Fish
1 litre of water
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup tightly packed brown sugar

How we smoked our fish…

I made the brine by dissolving the salt and sugar into 1 cup of boiling water. Then I added 3 cups of ice cold water. Once the brine was cool, I added the fish.

I let the fish soak in the brine for 1/2 hour, then removed it, dried it with paper towels, and placed it in the fridge until we were ready to smoke it.

For the tea smoking mixture, I crushed up the cinnamon stick, star anise and cloves in my mortar and mixed it with the tea, sugar and rice.

When we were organised, we went to the beach to set up our smoker.

Once on shore, we placed some tea mixture on the bottom of the trays. Then, because our rack doesn’t have legs, we used some old rocks from the beach and placed the frame on those, so it was sitting over the tea mix. Next, we put the fish on the trivet and topped it with the other tray. Using the bulldog clips, we secured the two trays together. The ‘smoker’ was then placed on top of a couple of bricks, allowing space for the burner underneath.

Now we needed a flame. Dwayne, always willing to do one for the team, then skulled a can of beer, proudly producing the much-needed burner equipment. He cut the beer can in half and filled it with dry sand, and then poured the white spirits over the sand. He lit this mix-up and placed it under the tray. We now had our smoker, and we could sit back with a refreshing glass of white wine while we let the smoker do its job.

(*Alternatively, you can use coals or a wood fire as your heat source.)

We smoked the fish for about an hour. The cooking time will depend on how hot you have it cooking.

We were delighted with the result! The next time we smoked fish, we made a scrumptious smoked fish chowder!