The Raw Truth About Lox (2003) | Hacker News Reader

The Raw Truth About Lox (2003)

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102 pointsnkurz62 comments

By the way, the best New York secret is "Fish Friday", when the Acme factory in Williamsburg sells its stuff directly to the public for pickup, including various experimental things they've come up with. It's easily the freshest, best-tasting smoked salmon I've ever had.

Last month, Acme made a video about the difference between Nova Vs Lox! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnzED08aOrs

Strange that the article didn’t mention gravlax[1]. It’s a salt and sugar cured salmon that melts in your mouth if done right and, at least to my taste, doesn’t overwhelmed you with salt. Of course last time I tried to make this I got salmon jerky, but that’s user error.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravlax

Was the salmon jerky at least any good?

I bet you could make a great fish pie with salmon jerky

Agreed. And, no insult intended, but it is not hard to do it right. It has one of the food world's highest result/effort ratios.

This comment and the parent between them strongly suggest to me I'm going to end up with salmon jerky at least once but I should seriously consider trying it anyway.

Salmon jerky is pretty good in its own right!

Yeah salmon jerky is not bad and the one I made was eaten fully. That said, gravlax is sooooo much better than jerky!

No offense taken - it was a pretty simple error of too much salt and waiting for too long, which produced quite edible salt cured salmon, but it was super dry (and gravlax is not supposed to be dry).

Grandma does it perfectly every time, just have to be patient and follow her directions :)

Smoked salmon is gravlax (brine of sugar and salt) + cold smoke.

I made it once. You have to put a weight on it while it's curing, like a gallon bottle of water. Did you do that?

Nope, that might be part of it. Also likely put way too much salt and held it for too long. Thanks for the tip!

> Strange that the article didn’t mention gravlax

Maybe because it was an article about lox.

Russ and Daughters also sells gravlax.

Tip: overcuring (too salty or too dry) can be reversed just by soaking in fresh water! Often just five minutes is enough.

It's saved my butt more than once.

Super interesting, but another case where I feel the value of the article would have like doubled if they had included images.

"Here is what lox looks like, and here is smoked salmon" would have helped.

Not being Jewish, or even American, it's not obvious if it's cold or hot smoked salmon that's the new favorite for instance. I would guess cold, but an image would probably have made it obvious directly.

Interesting perspective!

I'm an American, and I've always thought of lox - and smoked salmon, which until now I thought was the same thing - as cold.

Are there places where smoked salmon is served warm?

I don’t believe they were referring to how it’s served but how it’s prepared.

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/hot-smoked-cold-smoked-fish...

Hm yeah but I probably dropped a hyphen, I meant preparation. Sorry for upping the confusion. :)

Lox is very pink, wet, and otherwise looks just like sashimi swimming in a tub of brine. It's very, very salty. Keep it refrigerated. It does not smell very fishy because it's still in the brine.

Cold-smoked salmon is relatively easy to find in the US; CostCo makes a decent version under the Kirkland label. It's moist rather than wet and is usually sold as a thinly sliced slab on a waxed tray in a sealed bag -- it must be kept refrigerated and does not tolerate exposure to air for more than a few hours.

Hot-smoked salmon is even easier to find, but is nothing like the other two products. It's dry, flaky, and rather like an overcooked salmon fillet. If it is smoked all the way to jerky, it doesn't need to be refrigerated.

All of these will attract local wildlife.

the belly lox they are talking about aren’t in brine- they are thinly sliced and packaged much like the cold smoked stuff, though far more salty and oily…

According to this article, the word "lox" hasn't changed in 8000 years https://nautil.us/the-english-word-that-hasnt-changed-in-sou...

“Lox” is also one of the oldest words in English. It is a proto-Indo-European word that has retained the same meaning and sound for thousands of years.

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/185617923376/the-englis...

The Romanian lostriță (Romanian for the Danube salmon [1]) also most probably comes from proto-Indo-European, even though Romanian etymology dictionaries "chickened" out on this and used old-Slavic as a source for it (probably because of the word's "ending", "-triță", which is indeed Slavic-sounding).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huchen

According to Merriam-Webster, it arrived in English in th 1930s, from Yiddish: Merriam-Webster's definition of "lox": http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lox Corroborated by the OED: https://www.etymonline.com/word/lox (exact year conflicts; 39 and 34, resp.)

Given the excerpt of the original article (404) from your link, I'd guess the word traces back that far linguistically, and is more or less unmodified in sound, even though it only arrived in English recently.

Old English has leax "salmon" which is the same word. Which makes sense it's from the Germanic side of the fence.

The opening paragraph sets you up for some revelation in the shape of crab usually being imitation crab. Instead it's just that Americans say lox when they mean smoked salmon and don't like the thing that 'lox' means in other countries. I don't think this is particularly revelatory - there's a dozen of these, like peperoncinis.

Historically, fish preserved with salt were prepared for eating by soaking in several changes of fresh water over a 24-hour period. That's how salt cod is prepared, I wonder if this salt lox was supposed to be treated the same way?

https://philosokitchen.com/salted-cod-prepare/

Today, the way it is commonly eaten is with cream cheese on a bagel, so the plain carbs and dairy should cut the overall saltiness a lot.

That being said, I have fond memories of lox in my childhood, and I remember the bagels used to have much more generous helpings of cream cheese (nearly a half inch of it.) Maybe Americans being more diet conscious has indirectly driven the cream cheese off and lowered the salt tolerance in the dish.

Interesting. I've recently (last 5-10 years) noticed New Yorkers complaining about the quantity of cream cheese on bagels and suggesting that there's more than there used to be. (Leave it to New Yorkers to gripe about getting too much food for their dollar!)

I think that complaint is slightly different, that the fish:cheese ratio is becoming unbalanced towards cheaper cream cheese and away from expensive fish. Which is I suppose a form of shrinkflation.

As the saying that is widespread in the business has it, “You can’t get lox without a note from your mother.”

Fascinating!

Nova is Nova Scotian lox, and is both lightly brined and cold smoked. This should be made a bit more clear in the article.

Great article.

I had a houseguest and I toasted bagels for breakfast. I got out the cream cheese and smoked salmon, and he said, about the salmon, "I guess that's required for your religion?"

I said, "But I'm not Jewish!"

I didn't know that was required.

Required, forbidden, or somewhere in between?

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/815625/jewish... https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/rabbis-claim-lox-no-lo...

My favorite Kosher story is the controversy in New York over the copepods in the water supply. Some families were filtering all their water for fear of consuming the hapless little crustaceans.

I guess I inadvertently used "required" in both senses here: (1) required for Jews to consume smoked salmon, and (2) required to be Jewish to consume it.

I really meant (2) in the last paragraph.

Warning: article is about fish and has nothing to do with oxygen, liquid or otherwise.

Or with the toy programming language from Crafting Interpreters - https://craftinginterpreters.com/introduction.html

I was so hoping it was an article on rockets. Sad.

> the product may even be labeled as lox and they very well think they are enjoying lox, but what they are getting, instead, is smoked salmon.

I thought these were synonyms, with lox being a NYC and New England dialect choice.

The article says that 'lox' comes from the German 'lauchs' which means 'salmon'. So, 'lox' just means salmon. I don't believe that 'salmon' in German has to specifically mean 'salted cured but not smoked salmon', but apparently the author of the article thinks it does.

Lox or smoke salmon—-aren’t both

(A) delicious and (B) essentially deli meats that are super bad for you to consume on a regular basis

A deli and an appetizing store are different. You're talking appetizing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appetizing_store

Yeah that’s basically a deli I don’t know what to tell you

Also leave it to snobby ass New Yorkers to think it’s their responsibility to evangelize their naming conventions for food establishments onto everybody else. Like they’re the goddamn Inuit naming snow. Get real!

What I'm curious about is the marketing. Why call it lox instead of smoked salmon?

I think the article is somewhat overstating its case. As they mention, "lox" just means "salmon". As far as I know, over time some producers started smoking the salmon in addition to salt curing it (as is done with gravlax, etc.). The resulting product has a milder flavor and started to outsell the traditional lox. I don't think those producers would have necessarily agreed that once they started smoking the salmon it no longer was "lox".

As for the current business reasons to retain the name, it helps distinguish it from hot-smoked salmon (which is very different and used for different dishes), and of course it carries an "authentic", "old New York" cachet.

Sounds like it takes a true dedication to make and sell lox. A loxsmith, really.

If this was Reddit I'd give you an angry upvote.

Since this is a more discerning audience purportedly of culture, instead take this "thoughtful" commentary:

I think the article does lend itself to giving a less common insight into what goes into making and selling lox.

Nothing to it, you put your lox stock in the smoking barrel.

Great movie

I'm a loxsmith, and I'm a loxsmith.

https://youtu.be/XFhpctuUwb4

They're not talking about liquid oxygen

In the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice the nefarious SPECTRE smuggled* liquid oxygen together with butter, making everyone think the shipment of "butter and lox" was the fish and not the rocket fuel component.

* Perhaps transported is a better word, as they were quite transparent in that they were transporting 'lox'.

Wouldn't butter and liquid oxygen make a fairly nasty but effective rocket fuel? LOX is fun like that.

Indeed, from the title I thought it might be related to the infamous training safety film "The Man From Lox" (don't watch if you have a weak stomach.)

yeah, came here for the LOX spilled on tarmac stories ....

Substituting smoked salmon for lox seems fishy. A real caper, if you will.

No need to be salty about it.

Real lox is so salty that I know I won't ever eat it … again. I have come to really dislike salty salmon and, these days, barely use any salt when I season it.

I tend to not salt things full stop.

Many years ago, I made pasta (I forget what with) for a girlfriend and I for dinner, and she was deeply unimpressed I hadn't salted it.

The next time I made it, I made sure to have a giant jar of salt on the worktop ... but didn't actually add any.

She considered the end result much improved.

Hah! Your girlfriend and my wife have similar sodium habits (and perceptions). I've never been a fan of salty food but it seems the culinary consensus is to salt the hell out of everything although they call it "seasoning." I am convinced that salmon flavor suffers profoundly from the contemporary salting craze.

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