How we smoke our salmon

The Salmon arrives fresh from the Atlantic.
Our Master Smoker Peadar makes a quality control inspection on the salmon, ensuring that the raw material is first class!

Our filleters work skillfully with the knives along the backbone of the salmon, taking away as much of the flesh as possible.
They can again control the quality of the fish as their trained eyes look out for any blemishes. Only the finest Salmon is used for production.

Pure sea salt is used for the Salting process.
The salting process is extremely important to cure the salmon, kill off any bacteria and give taste. The curing process also improves the shelf life.

The Salmon fillets are left on the salting table with dry salt covering their surface, for 3 - 5 hours depending on the size.
Our Smoked Salmon would have a very low salt content of less than 2%.

The fillets of salmon are wet after the salt has been washed off and they need to be dried before they can take in the smoke properly. The fillets are placed on racks and the trolley is pushed into the Kiln.The air gently passes the salmon fillets bringing away any moisture that is left. This process would take up to eight hours depending on the size of the salmon.

We use two methods of smoking salmon – Cold Smoking and Hot smoking.

The Cold Smoking is the traditional Irish way of smoking Salmon. The temperature never rises above 35°C during the smoking, which means that the flesh never coagulate. We get an easily sliced product with a very smooth texture.

Hot Smoked Salmon is absolutely delicious with a texture more similar to poached or grilled salmon. During the hot smoking process temperatures rise as high as 80°C.

We use red oak shavings to generate the smoke and to give our smoked salmon a distinctive flavour. Oak is the traditional wood that has been used for smoking in Ireland since ancient times.

Vacuum packing together with salting and smoking ensures a long shelflife for our products. The air is sucked out from the pack and the bag sealed. This product has a shelflife of 28 days between 0°C and +2°C, which makes it perfect to withstand shipping for 48 hours. Our Smoked Salmon can also be frozen for up to three months.

The Burren Smokehouse is dedicated to provide a professional service to local businesses. We deliver our smoked products to shops, restaurants, castles, hotels and pubs in our area, from Galway to Limerick. Our nationwide service is covered by Fastway couriers who guarantee a delivery within 24 hours.
You can also avail of our almost global delivery service, directly from our Smokehouse to your door within 24 to 48 hours.