Galloway Smokehouse

Nestling on the banks of Wigtown Bay is the Galloway Smokehouse, home of prize winning smoked  Scottish salmon, trout, seafood and game. With the gentle smouldering of whisky cask sawdust and only the best in raw materials, prepare your taste buds for a real gourmet treat. From the simple kipper to the grand salmon a huge variety of smoked and fresh food is on offer.

To our loyal, new and indeed Royal customers, the seasons greetings to you all. In September we were honoured to supply our smoked salmon to Dumfries and Galloway Council, who were hosting a lunch marking the visit by HRH The Princess Royal. Honoured yes, but to all our regular customers out there you are the real test of our quality, with great regularity you ring us with credit card in hand, order our products and shower us with compliments - thank you for your continued support.

So here we are again, I am writing this in the midst of great financial turmoil, and by the time you read this, I hope there will be light at the end of the tunnel. However Christmas is coming, the nights are drawing in and there should be snow on the hills soon. Santa's sledge is cleaned and polished and his reindeers are on extra oats. It's time to offer you a variety of our products to grace the table and tickle the taste buds. We have made a few changes this year and after much deliberation included crab claw meat. I say deliberation because I just hope that we have sufficient stock.

Here at the Galloway Smokehouse, we pride ourselves on our quality control. Our kilns are small allowing close monitoring of small batches, our raw material is the best we can find and even our sawdust is specially selected. It is a by-product from a nearby Cooperage, where whiskey barrels are refurbished. This sawdust is impregnated with whiskey and when burnt in our smokers, gives a rich strength of taste to all of our products.

All foods are cured with salt before smoking and to balance the harshness most smokehouses add sugar. To give a fuller flavour we add dark syrup and black rum. So with the best in raw materials, lots of love and attention and that extra special fresh Scottish air, our prize winning smoked foods are a gourmet's delight.

In these days of mass production machines are now available to fillet and slice the salmon, unfortunately these machines make no allowances for the variations in the raw material. We at the Galloway Smokehouse pride ourselves on the hand filleting and slicing of all our salmon and trout (we do slice our bacon and duck by machine though).

After smoking all our products are vacuum packed to seal in the distinctive flavours. In this form they can be kept in the fridge or freezer without any loss in flavour. In fact, a selection of Galloway's finest in the freezer is always a good insurance for those emergency gourmet occasions.

Our philosophy is to produce the best tasting products using local materials at the best possible price while not wasting valuable resources on excess packaging. We cannot compete with mass production on price but can certainly beat most, if not all, on quality. So if you have not already tried some of our best make this Christmas something to remember and order as soon as possible - you will not be disappointed.

 
Allan Watson
Owner of Galloway Smokehouse