Double Duty Brine For Smoked Salmon & Jerky

It's always nice to get help from our readers when it comes specialty recipes that are used by a large number of fish and game resource users. Here is a Brining Recipe submitted by Doug Melvin in Port Angeles, Washington who is an avid outdoorsman and preserves a lot of the salmon, steelhead and wild game he takes on trips to Alaska and around his home.

He writes: "As for this brine recipe, this is by far the best and most versatile recipe I've ever run across. I can't take credit for it, though. It was given to me by another fisherman. You can even substitute moose, deer, elk or beef instead of fish to make the best jerky you ever tasted. No kidding! The recipe is for a smallish batch so you may have to double it if you have alot of fish."

• Fillet your slabs so they're boneless. Cut them into strips, head to tail, about an inch wide and the length of the fillet.
• In a large bowl mix the following:
  1/2 cup coarse salt
  2 cups demerrera sugar (darkest brown sugar)
  1 cup terriaki
  2 minced cloves of garlic
  1 Tbsp. fresh cracked black pepper
  1 Tbsp. cayenne pepper
  2 Tbsp. Worcestershire
  1 cup apple juice
  1 cup water

• Mix 'er up good. Put your strips in there and make sure they're well covered. Soak about 6 or 7 hours, take them out and you'll see they're colored and firm. No need to rinse them.

• Place them on sprayed racks (Pam or similar) and put the smoke to them for about 4 hours. Then put the heat to them moving the racks around so they get done evenly, and dry them till you like. Enjoy!

Thanks Doug for responding to our call for help on getting a variety of new tastes for the smoker.