I will have the opportunity to use a smoke oven, where I can adjust 3 parameters: time, temperature and humidity. I am pretty clear about time and temperature, but what about humidity?? Can you give me advice on humidity levels for hot smoked salmon and cold smoked salmon?
Usually when smoking salmon (hot smoking, anyway), it's desirable for the fish to dry out just a little. The flavor is intensified and the texture firms up a bit.
When cold smoking, the lot temperature prevents dehydration, and the fish usually remains fairly moist.
I think if you add much humidity at all to your smoke oven, it would cause the surface to be overly moist, and not as appetizing as it should be. It's just an educated guess of mine, so I may be wrong.
I know in a commercial setting, you'd want as little shrinkage and moisture loss of the salmon as possible, so there's more sellable product when the salmon is done. So adding humidity could very well be a benefit for that.
I'd try different settings with small loads of salmon to test for the best humidity level. It may be that smoking at first with the humidity up at 20 to 30% for most of the time, then shutting the humidity down to 0, to finish the salmon in a dry environment, might prevent shrinkage, yet create a pleasing, appetizing look to the exterior.
