My mom has been making lox for years, she has tried various flavors, including curing it with tea. She buys special curing salt online, but I skipped t hat. I made two variants, one using basic ingredients anyone can find, and one a bit more special. Both are exceptional, better than just about any lox one can buy. It started last Friday when we were shopp ing in Flushing. We were walking aro und a Chinese supermarket that has a goo d fish section. I asked the fish monger if he had any whole salmon, and he took out a beautiful, 18-pound salmon, which he was willing to sell me for $4 per pound. While I would love it, we have no room in our kitchen for that size fish. So with the help o f my mother-in-law (to do some translation into Chinese), I requested t hat he fillet and clean half and sell me that portion, it came out to just under six pounds and he charged $4.99 per pound. When we got the fish home, I used some clean needle nose pliers to pull each of the pin bones out. I also cleaned o ff any remaining scales and wiped t he salmon as dry as possible with papertowels. The final step before rubbing was to slice the side into four roughly equal lengths made two rubs. The first was ko sher salt, light brown sugar, and ground black pepper. The second was the same, but I replaced kosher salt with Applewood Smoked Salt . The magic ratio seems to be: y1/4 cup of salt y1/4 cup sugary1 tablespoon of pepperUse that amount per pound of fish. The next step is to thoroughly, VE RY THOROUGHLY, cover each piece of salmon i n the rub. Really pack the stuff on. Try to get it built up on t op and along each side. The texture is something like sand, so think of building a sand castle. You only need to get the rub on the flesh, dont worry at all about the skin side. If you get some on the skin, its fine, but wont help much. did two pieces of the basic rub and two pieces of the s moked. It is important to have two of each type you do, because the next step is to sandwich the pieces, flesh to flesh. When making the sandwich a lot of rub is going to fall off, try to minimize it. And after the sandwich is done, press more of the rub into the sides. Be generous! Wrap the sandwich in plastic wrap. Try to pull the wrap so the pieces are pressed tightly together . The trick is not pull the sides tightly closed. The salt and sugar are going to pull water out of the salmon and you want that to run off and out of the plastic.
