Why trout?

Why eat smoked trout?

I stopped making smoked salmon in favour of trout in 2021.

Here's why.

The taste

Less oily = less slimy

Firmer texture = cleaner mouthfeel

Provenance & farming technique

Pretty much all smoked trout or salmon you can buy is farmed. So choosing a fish that is farmed with the interests of the quality of fish and the environment in which the farm sits is pivotal. I'm going to come out and say it, I just can't keep up with salmon farming to be confident in its provenance and its interfaces with the surrounding environment. The trout I buy is farmed inland in England in farms fed by pristine rivers resulting in pristine fish. The beauty is that all of the water that torrents through the farms rejoins the river in exactly the same condition as it entered it thus avoiding the completely permeable interface of open-net salmon farming.

Hampshire is also much closer to London than Scotland meaning fewer food miles from farm to fork.

A big issue for fish farming to tackle is the amount of small fish you have to add to the stuff you feed the bigger fish. This is commonly simplified to a fish in to fish out ratio. The farm I use have developed through years of selective breading strain of fish that require a mere 1.2kg fish in to get a kilo of fish out. On average, a salmon requires 

rout are also more efficient converters of their food to our food.