In this informal YouTube episode, Adam Greenberg invites his father (referred to as "Dad") to demonstrate the family’s cold‑smoked Atlantic salmon recipe. The video opens with light‑hearted banter and a brief disclaimer that the episode is not vegan. Dad explains the 24‑hour cure in a salt‑sugar brine, the secret rub (kept undisclosed), and the smoking process using a cold‑smoker with timed wood pucks (20 minutes per puck, four pucks total). Along the way, they share personal stories about their family’s hospitality background – the Rabiner’s Hotel in the Laurentians, the short‑lived Zadie's restaurant, and their Russian‑born grandparents. The conversation also includes casual product mentions (Sherry, a favorite hot sauce, beer) and a promotional segment encouraging viewers to follow Dad on Instagram, share the video, and message Adam for a chance to win a “gold” prize. The tone is conversational, humorous, and nostalgic, blending cooking instruction with father‑son bonding and family history.
Chapters
Shawn, shove on.
Okay, I'm shoved.
Cooking with Mom, but it's actually Dad this time. Alright, welcome to another episode of Cooking with Mom, this time with Dad. And contrary to last episode where it was all about vegan because I've been vegan, This is not vegan.
Extreme.
Extreme flip side. This is more about just spending time with Dad because he smokes salmon and it's famous.
You know what they say, the toughest part about smoking the salmon is rolling it.
Right, that's good for the internet crowd, they're gonna love that. So we're here to smoke some salmon today. Some father-son bonding time. What could be bad with that?
Beauty. I also just want to apologize, I didn't have any vertical stripes, so I may look— you know, the camera adds 40, 50, 50 or so pounds.
All right, well, let's get started.
I'll do it. Okay, so, uh, most of the process was like started yesterday. We start with a 24-hour, uh, bath for— or, or bed sleep in a fridge. The salmon sleep in salt and sugar. And some other secret ingredients. And then from there they go into the fridge 24 hours. We pull them out, rinse them, cold, cold, cold water. And now we're moving to the next step, my secret rub, and getting ready to put them into the smoker.
We can't tell you what the secret rub is.
Can't tell you the secret rub. It's a secret because it's Atlantic salmon. We got to talk to a maritimer and, you know, yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Now, gotta get my part of the ingredients. This one I don't mind, Sherry.
Whoa. Should we really be sharing any of it? No, no, you heard Mom. She said no.
We'll keep going.
Could you season the salmon in your own damn room?
Dad, come on. There is one ingredient that I am not gonna keep a secret from you because I'm paying tribute to a fella whose sauce, hot sauce, that I love. In fact, I use it on my smoked salmon. In fact, I almost use it on everything. And I could tell you, to Dave, thank you for the sauce. I did snag this bottle from Jake.
So how long have you been smoking salmon for?
You know, I don't know if it's 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, but, you know, years and years and years of research. To finally find the right—
did you perfect it right away?
Uh, of course I did change the original recipe because I did switch to my secret rub, right? So, which makes a world of difference, right? Even from the original, which was an excellent, excellent product, but, uh, got it beat. There's another secret ingredient. This one actually you have to ingest. So while smoking, while smoking, there's nothing wrong with having a cold beer, especially to get the night going. But now the next step after this beer is to light up the smoker. Now the trick is also just like the beer The smoker has to stay cold because Locke's cold smoked. So, Charles, thank you very much.
I mean, have you ever seen a better beer commercial?
Come on! So now we're ready to get the smoker in. So now we've positioned the smoker so that we could take this film tonight, and, but Jan early. Now we got her charged with the, uh, pucks. There's 20 minutes per puck. There's 4 pucks in there, so that would make 1 hour and 20 minutes. The first puck is warming up and heating up, and then it's going to prime the smoker. Once that priming is done, I'm going to get my trays, and I'm actually going to load the trays in there, and then I will leave it smoke for an indefinite amount of time. But you guys figure that out because you'll balance it out with the remaining pucks. Which camera am I looking at?
That one.
Okay, well, Zadie's certainly is a popular name for grandfather in Jewish Yiddish, and my Zadie died when he was 56 in 1964, and in 1981 we started a restaurant at Rabiner's Hotel, Nelson and I, called Zadie's. And we opened in 1981, and then we closed in 1982. But we— our slogan was, we were famous since 1981.
Sure.
So, uh, we, we went for a full year, and it was an interesting experience. And so here's a bit of a tribute though to Zadie, although I don't think he ever made locks.
Right.
So what did he make? We could even say if Bubby was Goldie, we could say Goldilocks. Oh! But it wasn't, her name wasn't Goldie.
Right, right.
It was Anne.
Right, who I'm named after.
Right. But I like the Goldilocks.
Goldilocks is interesting, and Mom's name is Golda.
Golda, that's right.
Could be nice. Hold the locks, you know. Yeah, that could be something. And what was, what was Rubiner's Hotel for people who, uh, don't know?
It was a small hotel in the Laurentians, an hour from Montreal, and, uh, used to cater primarily to, uh, seasonal summer and winter, but very tough in the off-season, very quiet, because who would go to the Laurentians other than, let's say, maybe going up for a weekend to see the foliage, right? But lovely foliage, beautiful foliage.
And, um, oh, we're at the end of the roll, so we can't use that one.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, we're gonna use it all.
And Rabiners was your mom's—
yeah, your mom's, uh, parents. Yeah, mom's parents.
And their names were Anne and Mo Rabiner. And Anne is who I'm named after, correct? Yeah, what's a great story from Erwiner's?
Oh, we used to have a panic because me and myself and all my friends, we used to work there generations. I can't remember how many generations we were that worked there, but all of us starting out as, uh, dishwashers, busboys, and waiters, smashing bags, meaning bellhopping, moving luggage in and out of the hotel. And always having great, great times. It was like we were getting paid to go to summer camp, right? I think so. Cool. Yeah, quite an experience. Unfortunately, you know, it was an end of an era when we sold in 1986. The place was there for 50 years.
And, uh, so it was since, uh, '36, or—
yeah, uh, yeah, just about. Started out in Avery and then moved to St. Miguel.
And where did Grandma's parents come from?
Uh, Russia.
Russia. Where they were born in Russia?
Uh, yeah, I believe so. We're gonna go check on the smoke.
Let's do it.
Make sure she's smoking.
This is the, uh, smokeproof Patagonia polter fleece, as my dad would call it. So we're just about to pull out the smoked salmon from the smoker, which I guess was salmon before, now smoked salmon. Got the smoke show salmon in there. We've got all the, all the fixings. It's delicious salmon. It's actually probably like the thing I miss the most being vegan, oddly enough. Nickname was T-bone, but I miss this. Maybe it's like because my dad made it, you know.
Maybe that's why. All right, you ready to go in there? Let's go, let's go. Time to check the smoke.
Oh, it's glorious. That's the old smoke show.
The old smoke show. Oh, it smells so good.
It smells so good. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. That's my dad, @theotherless on Instagram. Follow him. He's fucking—
yeah, oh yeah, I know.
He's got all the dad content for you. And how about this? If you want to try my dad's smoked salmon, share this video, and send me a message on Instagram @adamgreenberg1, and you could win this. This gold.
Well, that's even beyond sampler.
That's— yeah, that's right. That could be yours. Have a great day.
