Anyone ever can pinks with a pressure canner? Worth it?

Definitely worth it. Canned pinks are some of my all time favorite eats. I find that its relatively close in taste and texture to canned tuna. Its even better if you lightly smoke it for an hour before packing it into the jars. Ill add a clove of garlic and a whole cayenne pepper for some zing. Put that on a cracker dude.

Thx for the recipe , we’ll start up the jar stuffing assembly line , and have a go!

Opps, forgot to thank the ownership, and IT support that booted access up again!

2 many thumbs up.

Spoonfed may like canned pink salmon, but I think it constitutes the dregs of salmon cuisine. First, we should understand that canning anything, by definition, overcooks it. Overcooking fish is a sin at my house. That said, I have canned sockeye salmon in half pints at 15 # pressure for the absolute minimum time that is considered safe, which if I recall correctly, is 60 minutes, maybe 50 - I would check my recipe before doing it again. I used to smoke the sockeye for a half hour before canning, but found I could save time by just adding 1/8 tsp of liquid smoke per half pint jar. That turns out quite good.

Pink salmon are pretty good table fare as fresh fish. If you catch more than you can eat fresh, smoke them. I had a friend who froze pinks and then smoked them. Freezing pinks is never recommended due to their soft flesh, but the frozen then smoked pinks turned out edible. Far better to smoke them and then freeze the smoked product.

I like to think that the fact that pink salmon doesn't keep well is nature's message to us that maybe we should keep only what we can use and then allow the large runs to "waste" themselves on the spawning grounds, benefiting other fish and animal species.

Salmo. Id bet a crispy Benny, that my canned pink would make your sockeye w/ liquid smoke taste like arse. I dont Welch either. And pinks keep for years when you can em.

Most of our Pink salmon consumption centers around three main fish handling processes. One , careful bonking, and handling after a quick bleeding. All go on/in an ice blocked cooler, laying flat, no bends. Also, No kicking, or booting around the decks when netting. They live in the cooler till we get home.

Fillet ASAP or quicker when home, then back on ice, not in. No water on fillets...

Second, Fire up the BBQ, and cook serving size fillets w a lil mix of olive oil, butter, ground pepper, and salt, a few minutes a side, and serve with a little lemon slice or a little butter and fresh garlic dip if preferred. Kinda like they do with great fresh steamed butter clams.

Eat till you can’t with fresh bbq toasted garlic bread, sweet corn on the cob , and baked beans on the side works well

Kinda funny about how folks view the "best" salmon. When I moved up here over 50 years ago, salmon was salmon for eating purposes. Since then, I have run into folks who maintain that each species, even specific stocks, are best. Those who liked pinks, though, insisted in fresh, and the fresher the better so maybe a stream side BBQ is tops.

While I can tell the difference between species (now) I think a lot of it is mental/cultural, as a few stories show.

Doc Donaldson, the huge trout fame, took some of those fish and fed them the exact same diet except for added food coloring. In a taste test, North Americans preferred the deeper red fish while Northern Europeans preferred the white.

Some friends once served up a "White King" that they were extolling its flavor. When I saw the rest of the fish I noticed some pale vertical bars on the silver sides; chum.

Lastly, I saw a tv show where, I think it was Irish, folks were extolling Atlantic Salmon over Pacific and they preferred the farmed Atlantics to wild Pacifics.

This has led me to believe that there is no "absolute" best but a personal preference that includes flavor, texture, color, and maybe even where, when, and how you caught it. Which, for me now, puts a Kenai sockeye (the fresher the better) at the top of the table. But I also don't think that I have ever had a bad fish, except for one coho jack that was just dry and tasteless.

Spoon, keep your Benny and your canned pinks. People like what they like, and that's OK with me. I don't know any salmon snobs - and I know plenty - who rate pink salmon very high, especially canned pink salmon. Enjoy your canned pinks; no ones gonna' come steal 'em.

You were all trained well.

The original sellers of salmon to the masses classified/ renamed / and graded salmon based upon meat Color . Reds to Pinks were classified by thier color with reds paying well, and Pinks not so much.

The original buying public then assumed higher priced red meated salmon must taste better., and after 150 years or more of consuming these fish based upon commercial pricing, the color matters the most to those consumers.

I remember back in the late 60’s when local river gillnet fisherfolk pulled nets, if the kings were white, they were separated from the red /orange kings before sale, and separately disposed of.

I am a salmon snob. One summer camping on San Juan Island SP, we caught some chrome fresh Pinks. Instantly bled, gutted, packed in ice for a family dinner that night racked up over the campfire. I made the mistake of bringing a frozen thawed chunk of Spring Chinook. Cooked side by side and looked great. Family hardley picked at the Pink. You get what you get with what you start with. Canning , smoking, freezing, pickling, whatever you do with it, it still is what it is. IMO only...#1 LR Spring Chinook. #2 Early Summer Steelhead. #3 Ocean/estuary Fall Chinook. #4 Ocean estuary Coho, or Sockeye. I don't bother with the rest, even Sockeye I think is too dry, even on the rare side. C & R the rest for fun, because I get enough of other to process for the year. BTW, the canning liquid smoke trick works pretty good without the labor.

There are some folks on a different form I used to frequent who swear by pickled pink salmon. I never tried it myself, but it involves vinegar so it has to be at least decent. I like pickled herring though….
SF

Hmm, could that love of pickled herring help explain that “King of the Beach” fishing title ?

My dad loved that stuff, and always had it snacking with crackers and strange smelling cheese ! Then after dropping a fair bit of both into the bowels of my boat one day afloat, my in the boat ban hammer dropped , and he went shore bound for the rest of the season . Or maybe it was only a week, it’s been a long time now, but that stuff can really linger...

BTW, saw some nice small schools rolling up on the local beaches here, but seem a bit tight lipped so far.

Good Luck

I took a mile long walk to a beach in MA 10 on Friday. Lots of jumpers, but really concentrated out in the shipping lanes. Nothing jumping near the beach and it only yielded one cutt. The coho seem to be MIA for the most part. Some around, but not many. Looks like we might get a bit of rain late next week which should help things.
SF

There's more to it than meat color. After all, the color is just an expression of carotene retention by the fish, which varies among species and even stocks of fish; i.e., some Chinook stocks are white fleshed even though they eat the same diet as their red meated cousin Chinook. Then there is lipid content. Fish that migrate long distances and or have a long time between river entry and spawn timing have more, in some cases a lot more. This is what places spring Chinook, certain sockeye stocks, and summer steelhead at the top of the podium. And then there is keeping quality. Chinook and coho keep much better than chum and pink salmon. Therefore they fetch a higher price. Pink salmon come in last place on all counts. They have the shortest distance or time between freshwater entry and spawn time and the lowest lipid content, and they are very poor keepers. That is why they fetch the lowest price and why people who are particular about their fish choose pink salmon last.

I haven't fished for pink salmon on purpose since the 1995 run on the Skagit, where we had a "Humpy Holiday" and caught and kept a few. I'm pretty busy the rest of this month, but if I can break away for a day, I just might go fish for them on purpose again. We'll see.

Hmm, wonder how the length of migration theory fits the Prince George pinks on the Fraser. Or the Seton/Anderson even who go way further up than anything here in WA. But, yeah, the really lipid-rich fish seem better at table.

But, since my preference will be to play with the salmon rather than eating them I do plan to exercise a few riverine pinks. If we decide to smoke one for friends we'll probably give that a whirl.

Salmo, today hopefully, we understand the reasons, and science behind the flesh color of theses fish, back in the original commercial raping of the mighty salmon, they clearly did not.

Stories as told by the old times a 100 years ago, assert it was more of a money driven race to catch as much and as many salmon as the technology of the day allowed, and all was driven by the market. Reds good, Pinks not so good, and the money taken promoted that thinking as fish buyers lined up . I know, anecdotal at best.

Even the mighty kings suffered, as they dumped the whites, and sold the red fleshed...

On a happy humpy note, I hope your decision to have a go fishing for Humpys again, is a good one, with lotsa action, tons of released fish, some fun, and a great day on the River, or salt if you prefer.

Fish On

I've enjoyed catching pinks with a six weight fly rod. I tied a fly that I thought would work with a wire wrapped hook shank for a little sinking ability. It was basically a Carey Special, but with a magenta body and a long pink hackle to give it some motion when stripped in short jerky strips. Worked really well. Take care of the fish and smoke them right away or can them. Certainly not my favorite, but not bad when done right.

My fly fishing mentor, Jim Garrett, had his preferred pink fly, the Orange Trinity. Three orange balls of floss over gold tinsel the a white hair wing. He used Polar Bear, as I recall. Used them intitally on the Dungeness in '79 on the Summer Pinks.

His set up was about 10' of lead core between the line and leader. Got the fly down quickly. C&R'd a nice bunch of fish. The most interesting aspect of that fishery was the Summer Steelhead that hit the fly about once an hour. That really changed the fight. Never happened to me but I saw it a couple times.

When I was up in Nome I ran into some pinks in a pool on one river. About 50 pinks, a couple nice Dollies and some nice grayling. The pinks were occasionally taking something off the surface but I concentrated on the grayling as there a 19" toad who took my dry and got me an ADF&G certificate for releasing a big one. Want to go back there and try to induce all three species come out and play.

Garret was quite a guy. I spent some time with him when I lived in Port Angeles. Polite but real opinionated - but that's okay. We could use more like him.