Easy Salmon Cakes

When planning this week’s menu I enlisted Anthony. I’m having trouble coming up with things to eat 5-6 days a week. It’s not the easiest thing to do. I like to have a balance of fish, meat, and no-meat dishes. So I can usually come up with 3-4 meals on my own and then I can’t find 1 or 2 more meals that sound appealing and fit into my balance structure. This week Anthony chose to make fried rice for dinner and he suggested that I make salmon cakes. Salmon anything usually sounds good to me and I found a recipe for salmon cakes on eatingwell.com. Sounds healthy to me!

One of the items I had to buy for the salmon cakes was 15 ounces of canned salmon. I’ve never bought canned salmon. When I’ve made salad and wanted salmon on it I bought it in a one of those pouch/bag type things. I wasn’t ready for what was going to greet me in a can of salmon. I assumed it would be a little like tuna fish. (On another note, I am not a fan of tuna fish, because I don’t really like tuna unless it’s in sushi.) This was NOTHING like tuna fish. The minute I opened it I was scared. The first thing I noticed was the skin on the fish. Ew. Then I noticed that there were bones!! Bones and skin, what the heck! Now skin is fine if I’m pan frying fish on the stove or grilling it. It is not okay if it needs to be removed in order for me to make patties out of it. So I started cleaning the skin off the fish. That was when I noticed the most horrifying item, the spinal cord!! This fish still had a spine people!! That is not okay. That will never be okay to me! I HAD to clean all the bones off this fish. I wasn’t eating any, that’s for sure. SO I pushed the bones off the fish with a knife, one vertebra at a time. I’m still uneasy about this whole experience. I will not be rushing out to buy more canned salmon anytime soon. I googled canned salmon later and found out that some people are actually eating it with the skin and bones still there. Apparently this is possible because it’s mostly cartilage. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to eat cartilage either. You should see how picky I am when eating chicken wings. Forget it! Eating bones is not an option people!

The rest of this was a breeze compared to that first step. In a skillet with oil, cook the chopped onion and celery until soft. Then take it off the heat and stir in the parsley. Next you add an egg and mustard to the salmon and mix that well. You then add the onion mix, breadcrumbs, and ground pepper and mix that well too. Form the mixture into 8 patties and put them in a skillet with some oil and cook the patties until their undersides are golden. Then flip them over onto a baking sheet and place in the oven at 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes. .

Final Product:

The salmon came out pretty well. Both of us enjoyed the flavor of the cakes. They were more bready and dense than I typically like my seafood cakes. I’m a more seafood, less bread type of girl. I used a little less then a cup of breadcrumbs and the recipe calls for 1 3/4 cups. That is way too much and even what I put in was too much, so I would start with ½ a cup of breadcrumbs if you decide to try this recipe. It was nice having a salad for a side dish, instead of our usual starch. I also made Creamy Dill sauce to dip the salmon cakes into. That is just mayo, plain yogurt, scallions, dill, lemon juice, and black pepper. It wasn’t bad, though I don’t really love mayonnaise.

I’m not sure what I’m cooking next; depends on what I might be in the mood for. Maybe shrimp. I do love me some shrimp!