Pickleing fish (suckers)???

[littlejohn]

I read below that suckers are good pickled. Have had pickled herring and enjoy it. Anyone have a recipe for the brine and pickling process?

Thanks
John

[Salmonsmoker]

Littlejohn,

Try the recipe for "Panfish Hors d'oevers." It will work fine for a starting place.

If you don't want the sour cream - try adding a little sugar to the pickling recipe. Experiment with other spices and you will come up with your own unique flavor.

Another process that I have used with Suckers is to put them in the smoker after pickling. The coarse meat on Suckers absorbs the smoke much better than fine meated fish. For the smoker, I would stay with a cold brine so as to firm up the filet meat (and leave the filet whole instead of cutting into chunks - makes it a lot easier to turn and rotate positions).

To remove the many small bones, I took pickled and smoked Sucker-filets and ran them through the meat grinder (1/8 in. grinding plate) 2 times, then stuffed them into slim-jim casings, then resmoked the "fish sticks" for a couple of hours (mostly to dry them). Makes excellent snack food for deer camp, in the field, or on the water.

Salmonsmoker