Skipness Smokehouse’s premium Scottish Cold Smoked Salmon is traditionally hand crafted and uses a dry brining process and a slow cold smoke.
To produce our premium Scottish Cold Smoked Salmon we carefully select only the finest fresh salmon for size and quality. We source our quality fresh salmon exclusively from Loch Duart. The fish arrive whole and are filleted by our skilled staff which allows us to control the process and the quality from start to finish, with no mechanisation, which is becoming increasingly common. Our truly hand crafted Cold Smoked Salmon sides undergo a traditionally slow curing process taking up to 48 hours. This starts with encasing the fresh fillets in a dry brine of sea salt laced with a small amount of dark brown sugar. Our dry brine produces a good firm texture to the fish but can take between 12-20 hours to complete, depending on the ambient temperature. The process helps absorb some of the moisture in the fish and to allows the flavours to slowly penetrate.
The salty dry brine is then washed off and the fish is dried out and the fillets are now ready to be placed in the smokers and smoked using old whisky barrels which we chip ourselves. The sides of salmon are smoked for approximately 18 hours at a low temperature, to a maximum of 28°C, allowing the delicate smokey flavour to impregnate the fish giving it its unique taste and the melt in the mouth texture.
Skipness Smokehouse offer hand crafted, luxury Cold and Hot Smoked Salmon, Loch Fyne Kippers, Smoked Mackerel, seasonal delicacies such as Smoked Duck and our irresistible Smoked Fish Pates all produced in small batches at our artisan smokehouse.
The business was established in 1990 on the Isle of Arran and in 2016 relocated, back to the family farm, at the top of the Kintyre peninsula, in the picturesque village of Skipness. The smokehouse, is situated in the grounds of Skipness Castle, just a small ferry ride away from the Isles of Arran, Islay, Jura and Gigha.
Storage
Our Scottish Cold Smoked Salmon has a 21 days use by date following vacuum packing and can be frozen for up to 6 months