Training; further exploring filleting, curing & smoking methods

We were lucky enough this week to welcome back an esteemed colleague, Ivan Jaines-White back onsite for 2 days to facilitate an excellent training course here at "The Burnt Hill Herb Co." 

We first made contact with Ivan years ago through the industry-famous education centre at the Seafish academy here in Yorkshire.

The purpose of Ivans visit was to assist us to further our existing knife skills and to develop a range of smoked product recipes to enable us to bring our produce to market. 

Ivan delivered an excellent program, covering basic-expert level skills training to ensure our team were all upto speed in the specific areas of our workflow. 

So we began with basic gutting and filleting methods, but also introducing some trickier cuts like the "butterfly filleting technique."   

We then explored various advanced salting and brining methods , including introducing some traditional and innovative flavours from our own Herb collections.

Finally we undertook experiments with various wood dusts and smoking techniques, exploring the subtle differences in using various wood chips from our native woodland trees (Beech, Oak, Alder, Apple, etc.)

We explored different smoke densities, timings and methods to grasp how the smoke and the kiln settings affect things like flavour and texture qualities. 

We then completed our workshops by learning all of the slicing methods available to the smoked fish industry. So we furthered our existing skills by learning how to hand trim the sides, D-slicing, V-slicing by hand, and how to maximise yield from various thicknesses and textures of the sides of our delicious rainbow trout, grown here on the farm.

Overall, the team fully enjoyed the experience and we look forward to welcoming Ivan back to our farm site in the not too distant future to further develop our now enhanced combined skillsets and to continue to extend our excellent training programme here on the farm.