I don’t tend to eat much fish, but in the supermarket earlier I saw some smoked salmon which didn’t need cooking, and some salmon fillets which did. They looked the same really - both ‘raw’. I decided to buy some of the fillet. It was nice, but a very different flavour from when I’ve tried smoked salmon in the past. The cooked fillet was quite chicken-y with a slight earthy/fishy taste, whereas smoked salmon has a very strong fish flavour.
Why do they taste so different? And why is smoked salmon safe to eat without cooking when other smoked fish do need cooking?
Cold smoked salmon (such as nova lox) doesn’t look raw, it IS raw. The temperature of the fish never gets pass 37C.
Instead of killing bacteria via high temp via cooking, cold smoked food usually kills becterias by some other way like drying or brining first and the smoke is usually there to impart flavor only.