This weekend at the Damariscotta Mills Fish Ladder Restoration Festival on Bayview Road in Nobleboro twelve bushels of smoked alewives will be available for sale just across the road at Mulligan’s Smoked Alewives.
Co-owner sisters Sally Mulligan and Mary Mulligan Buchan carry on their family tradition of cold smoking the bony fish that returns for its annual climb up the fish ladder to spawning beds in Damariscotta Lake.
“We’re only going to get in two smokings this year because the fish were so late coming in,” Buchan said. “Normally we might do three.”
After the fish have been brined in buckets of salted water for a minimum of 24 hours, they’re strung on sticks, 10 per string. The strings are hung in the rafters of the smokehouse and a fire is built in a pit sunk in the floor. Over apple wood coals, the Mulligan sisters spread mixed sawdust to create the smoke.
The alewives are cold smoked three or four days running.
“We go by color. If it’s a nice bronze color, they’re smoked enough,” said Buchan.
Smoking is for flavor and does nothing to preserve the alewives according to Buchan.
“We keep the heat down and the smoke up,” said Buchan. “You have to cook them, and then they’re ready to eat.”
A string of 10 placed in a plain paper bag sells for $5. Buchan said that paper bags have been getting hard for her to find.
“Luckily Jeff Pierce at Yellowfront Grocery ordered some specially for us at no cost, which is very kind of him,” Buchan said.
Smoked alewives will be available at Mulligan’s smokehouse during the festival Memorial Day weekend, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, May 24 and Sunday, May 25 and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, May 26.