Smoking a Fish in Finland!

The whole family went for a short little vacation to Finland this past week. A friend of ours named Daniel is dating a Finnish girl named Elina. They have actually been dating for several years (they spent more time at my parents’ house then I do), but we have never managed to go see them in Finland, they have come over to Sweden a couple of times. So it was finally time to make the trip over.

Elina actually grew up on the Finnish side of the Russian border, but has been living in Turku (Åbo in Swedish) for several years. Turku, from what we saw of it, is a nice town. It felt a lot like Uppsala in the sense that it is a student town. Apparently it is also one of the world’s largest producers of cruise ships. It is a good sized town at 175,000 people. It has a pretty lively center with a market that you can find coffee cheese, mushrooms, berries, and fresh fish (among other things).

It is the fish that is the important thing here. Daniel got the crazy idea that he wanted to smoke a fish for our last night in Finland. Now, this gave us two different options- a fire in the parking lot or one of the bags for the oven. Of course we picked the fire in the parking lot. Was there ever another choice to be made? No, of course not!

One has to understand what all is involved in smoking a fish. First you have an open fire. Not a big one, just one large enough to warm the smoke box. If the fire is too big, the fish will end up being dry. If the fire is too small, there is a chance the fish will not be fully cooked (thus it will have worms).

Before we actually started to smoke the fish, we called the fire department to make sure that we would not be breaking any laws. The way I saw it, it was no different from grilling. The fire department assured us that we were in fact breaking no laws as long as we were there- which of course we were.

So we started our fire and just sat there drinking beer waiting for the fish to finish. It took about 55 minutes to complete and when it was done, it was beautiful fish. I was always under the impression that smoking a fish was difficult. It was pretty darn easy to be honest with you.

Though the neighbors were not impressed with the idea at all, to say the very least. One of them came out right as we were starting and said that he thought that it was a very bad idea. We ignored him (well, that was actually when we called the fire department to make sure we would not be arrested). Then a lady, right as we were finished and had started to clean up, came out and said that we had to stop right that minute. Of course we were already done, so that was not a problem. Part of me wanted to continue just so we did not give the lady the satisfaction of thinking that she was the one that convinced us to stop, but it was raining. So we did not. It felt as though the Finnish people were a bit anal, even more then the Swedish.
The final result: The fish was wonderful. Not to mention that it was super easy to do. Daniel and Elina did a great job hosting us. A nice little adventure for the family!