Smoking Fish

Critical to the transition of our ancient ancestors from a hunter-gatherer, hand-to-mouth lifestyle was the development of effective methods of preserving food, so that they could take advantage of seasonal harvests or fortuitous bulk food supplies – a sudden mammoth or a stranded whale, which certainly couldn’t have been eaten all at once! Or an annual run of fish, resulting in bulk availability for a short period, would only have been of longer-term value had there been a way to preserve the catch for later use.

Some of the food preservation techniques commonly developed in different parts of the world included chilling the food with ice harvested from frozen lakes or rivers, salting, sun/wind/fire drying, or smoking. But why put all your eggs in one basket? Several similar methods were developed around the world that involved a combination of salting, drying, and slow smoking that not only produced preserved, long-lasting food that could be stored for future use, but also products you could trade, like ham, bacon, jerky, biltong and, of course, smoked fish.