What’s the next best thing to do when you can’t fish because of the weather? With all the fish in the freezer, YUP, it’s that time to make candy.

What defines Indian Candy salmon to me? Most of the time, the ones selling Indian candy salmon sell sweet smoked fish. As usual, the smoking process produces a moist, colourful, and full-flavoured product, but I still consider it a smoke fish even though they call it candy. Candy salmon, to me, is hard, dry, tough like jerky, thicker, and full of flavour.

The first thing to do when creating Indian candy salmon is to dry it. Lots of failed attempts trying to discover the perfect recipe. You need a lot of air moving like a convection oven but at a low temperature of 90-110 degrees with multiple layers for volume in a dehydrator. The convection oven could only do little batches. A 12-14-tray dehydrator with thermostat control turned out to be perfect. I also wanted to penetrate 100% of the salmon, and that doesn’t often happen when doing large volumes. Creating a vacuum bag forces the candy brine through the full depth of the salmon slices. The photo displays two ten-pound bags of salmon in a vacuum bag soaking in the brine. One of the biggest mistakes is to pour all the brine over the cut salmon, hoping it will penetrate. It won’t, as all the pieces will adhere to each other. I find it efficient to put portions of the salmon volume in a large steel bowl, pour the brine over them, and hand mix all the pieces until all parts are wet. Once wet, they will not stick together, and the brine will want to travel throughout the bag due to the vacuum. I flip the bags over every 12 hours. I normally let the salmon sit in the bags for 2 days but this time I left it for 3 days. WOW! What flavour.

Recipe for about 7 pounds: Making lots of extra brine never hurts.
1 cup of light soy sauce (light soy is the saltiest)
1 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of granulated sugar (if not used, increase the maple syrup by another 1/4 cup)
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
Lots of garlic powder
2 teaspoons of lemon pepper (always add extra)
1/4-cup maple syrup

After the brine time, drain the fish and place them on racks to dry up a little. I generally allow them to dry for a minimum of an hour. Spray the dehydrator trays with non-stick spray and place the salmon tight but without the pieces touching each other. Set the dehydrator to 110 degrees for the first 24 hours and then drop it to 90 degrees for the second 24 hours. They should be hard by then and full of flavour.

Salmon pieces dried on a rack for an hour after being removed from the brine create a glaze on the salmon.

For the first 24 hours, I started with ten racks filled tight, the salmon pieces nearly touching each other. This morning, it is now reduced to seven racks. The next 24 hours will be even more. You lose about 1/3 of the volume when you dehydrate them to the candy level. To me, true candy salmon will be hard and full of flavour.

It’s very simple, very easy to do, and very addicting. I have also used this process on brown trout and steelhead with amazing results.