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.
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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.
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How do I make this with frozen salmon fillets we bought at Costco. They were very dry and tasteless when we just grilled them, so we need to make them into something. Thank you in advance
OMG!!!! (drool…drool…) This outdid my grandmother ‘s salmon patties!!! PERFECT!
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I grew up eating salmon patties and hadn’t had them in years. I made a batch recently and it brought back images of when I ate them as a child. My grandma always used Ritz crackers rather than bread,bread crumbs or saltine crackers. I used the garlic Ritz and they were even better. Now everyone wants me to make some for them,freeze them and ship them to them.