Salmon Patties, A Childhood Memory
Raising six kids on a teacher’s salary, my parents were always cooking on a budget. Being Catholic, with the requirement back then of meatless Fridays, Lent or not, this meant that we ate a lot of tuna macaroni salad and fried fish.
My mother often made tuna patties for us, and less frequently, because they were more expensive, salmon patties.
For several years, my father and I tried to talk my mother into making these salmon cakes again for us. For some unfathomable reason, she refused, even going as far as to claim that she never made salmon cakes in the first place.
After a while, we gave up. And my father set about to make these salmon patties himself, with his own spur-of-the-moment recipe.
How to Make Salmon Patties
Salmon patties, or salmon cakes, are wonderfully easy to make. You make salmon patties with just a base of cooked salmon, shredded bread, bread crumbs or even saltines, chopped onion, and egg to bind it all into patties, and then these salmon cakes are quickly fried.
In this easy salmon patties recipe, my father dresses up the salmon cakes with garlic, dill, bell pepper, and paprika. I’ve added some lemon zest and lemon juice. You could also add parsley, Old Bay seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, or cilantro. Feel free to improvise and make these salmon cakes your own!
Salmon Patties Recipe
PrintIngredients
- 1 (14.75 ounce) can salmon, undrained and flaked
- 1 slice of bread, shredded
- 3 Tbsp chopped green onion, including the green parts
- 1 medium garlic clove, minced
- 1 Tbsp fresh chopped dill weed, or 1 teaspoon dried
- 3 Tbsp minced green bell pepper
- 1 Tbsp flour
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Several turns of freshly ground black pepper
- 3 Tbsp olive oil
Method
1 Mix patty ingredients: In a large bowl, gently mix together the salmon, bread, green onion, garlic, dill, bell pepper, flour, egg, paprika, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
2 Form into 8 patties, each about 1/2 inch thick.
3 Brown in skillet: Heat olive oil over medium high heat in a large skillet. Cook the patties until nicely browned on both sides, about 3-4 minutes per side.
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Links:
Baked Salmon Cakes from Gina of SkinnyTaste
Fresh Salmon Cakes from Chef John of Food Wishes
Paleo Salmon Cakes from Everyday Maven
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
Salmon Patties
First of all your recipe is awesome, it took me back to my childhood days. I just have never figured out why people try the recipe, maybe tweak a few things, then go on to describe how theirs are better. Some people seem they pretty much tweaked the WHOLE ingredients list. Then why post? Start your own recipe site and tell everybody about it.
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Hi Robert, I’m so glad you like the recipe! I generally encourage people to think of recipes as guidelines, and bases off of which to experiment. I do like reading about the changes or substitutions they’ve made. Of course when they’ve made a bunch of changes and then it doesn’t work and they give us a bad rating, well that’s not exactly fair. But I do like reading about the tweaks!
How do you make the sauce everyone is talking about? I’m going to try these soon.
Hi, Gayla! It sounds like most people are talking about a simple bechamel sauce, which is made by making a roux (cooking together equal parts flour and butter) and then whisking in warm milk to make a creamy sauce. We don’t have a straight bechamel recipe on the site, but you can make one by following this recipe and omitting the cheese at the end. (Or keep the cheese! It would be tasty!)
I never made salmon patties and it was very easy,I didnt have lemon,but I did use panko bread crumbs,I took a picture how do i hastag,yours truly Elena F. From chicago
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Hi Elena, I’m so glad you liked the salmon patties! Regarding hashtagging, if you share your photo on Instagram, include “@simplyrecipes” in the text of the description of the photo (without the quotation marks).
I used left over cooked salmon fillets and they worked great. I just adjusted the amount of the other ingredients down because I had less than 14 oz of salmon. Very yummy!
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I made this tonight, however, it didn’t turn out quite right. The ingredient combination is very good. Yet still, if you are using a cast iron skillet on an electric stove (like I did), the procedure is way off. At 4 minutes per side on medium heat, the patties were barely browned and quite mushy, although I had allowed my skillet and oil to pre-heat for a full 10 minutes during prep work. I recommend cooking these at a moderately high heat setting and using bread crumbs instead of a shredded fresh piece of bread. This recipe required a considerable amount of adjustment.
Hi Eric, stovetops vary widely in their heat, so for many recipes you’ll need to make adjustments to suit your particular stovetop.