Spanish Mackerel - in the smoker

I was buying a chicken at Whole Foods that I was going to smoke for dinner tonight. I thought about doing some fresh sausage, too, but WF doesn't have any fresh sausage that I like much and I needed just a bit more food in case our dinner guest was very hungry....

So, I wandered to the fish area. I knew that my friend would eat salmon, so thought maybe I'd smoke that. That's when I spied the whole, wild caught Spanish mackerel. Having never made mackerel in any form, but thinking it would be tasty smokes, I figured why not try it on a day when company was coming, I only had 3 1/2 hours before dinner had to be done, and I still needed to clean and finish some work.

When I got it home, I realized it really was whole - as incompletely whole, never eviscerated. Even though I'd noticed the head and tail, I just assumed it was gutted. Nope. So, now I get to figure out how to gut it (another thing I'd never done), how to prep it and how to smoke it and have it done in 3 hours.

Some internet searches helped a bit, but not as much as I'd have preferred. I decided to brine it for about 30 minutes, then let it form a pellicle, and finally smoke it for 30-45 minutes at a higher heat than I normally do hot smoked fish. Time and all that.

It worked! While my brine was probably a tad bit salty for me, my guest and Mr Views loved it. It was softer than I expected, very rich and fatty, and truly delicious.

I haven't seen mackerel there before, but I could have just missed it. It was $5.99 a pound and my fish was about 1.25 pounds. Not enough for several people without other food, but with the chicken, we had about 1/3 of it left.