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 tablespoons chopped green onion, including the green parts
- 1 medium garlic clove, minced
- 1 tablespoon fresh chopped dill weed, or 1 teaspoon dried
- 3 tablespoons minced green bell pepper
- 1 tablespoon 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 tablespoons extra virgin 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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PrintProducts We Love
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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
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
Elise, we are Traditional Catholics and attend the Latin rite. We still eat fish every Friday and add Wednesday in Lent. I have been reading your blog for years and truly I can say it has been a huge influence on my learning to cook! I send so many friends to your blog as it is such a well organized and reliable cooking resource. Keep up the good work and we love these patties!
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Delicious! Used 2/3 C Panko crumbs. Made into 6 patties. Will definitely make again!! Thank you for an easy, tasty and healthy recipe!
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Taste was good. Very soupy. Didn’t want to stick together in skillet. Recipe said undrained salmon? Hoping that was a misprint.
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Hi, Glenda! I’m glad you liked the flavor of the salmon patties, I’m sorry they didn’t quite stick together. If the salmon is completely drained the patties can be too dry. If you make them again, increase the amount of bread crumbs or drain the salmon, but add the liquid back in a little at a time until the patties stick together. Good Luck!
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!)