Macneil's Herefordshire Cider and Apple Cured Salmon - Our take on Gravlax

This product is unique to Macneil's Smokehouse and is the only one of our products not smoked! Many people refer to this as our "applewood smoked" but that's a myth! It's not smoked, its cured! 

But How Is It Done?

We cure sides of salmon for 7 to 10 days in our own cure mix. We use a mixture of sugars, salt, peppers, dill, apples and cider (plus a lot more but shh, they're a secret). The alcohol in the cider is what gives this salmon a different density and what we refer to as the "bite". We start making our cure mix by blending the dry ingredients. 

Next we mix the wet ingredients. Sides of salmon are then slashed on the skin to ensure the cure mix penetrates the fish evenly. The salmon is then layered in large containers and covered with the dry cure mix. 

They are then covered in the wet mix and put in fridges to cure. They are checked on daily and turned to ensure even flavour. After 7 to 10 days they are removed and the cure mix is washed off. 

Once washed the sides of salmon are left to dry before we coat them in our own recipe apple powder coating which gives the extra sweetness to the flavour

We then hand slice the sides in to pretty little slices. We slice this product "Scandinavian style" which is where the salmon is sliced straight down towards the skin creating delicate thin slices that look great on a plate. This is our preferred slicing method as it allows each slice to have the same complexity of flavour and even distribution of coating as the apple coating is key to the flavour. 

The slices are individually placed on to boards by hand and weighed out, vacuum packed for freshness, then packed in to the outer packaging and labelled with the details of the product. Now it's ready to go out to our fabulous retailers to sell in their shops. 

And in to delicious sandwiches