If you work like I do, I've bet you've had a few nights where you've come home and your vegetable drawers are looking pretty empty and somehow there's no meat defrosted. You're tired, but still want a tasty dinner. This happened to me a few weeks ago. I looked into the fridge and I had some canned salmon and I remembered I had finally found a alternative flour-free salmon patty recipe that I wanted to test out. Aptly, this recipe from Nourish Paleo Foods is called Lazy Salmon Burger. She makes a tahini sauce as well, but I didn't make it.
I quickly gathered my ingredients.
The only vegetable you need for the recipe are green onions. As I said, I made this on a night when the produce drawer in my fridge was running low and perhaps a little past prime. Most food blogs out there wouldn't show pictures like this, but I think its important to show day to day reality in the kitchen. My green onions were a little past prime. The looked mostly good, but the ends had wilted a bit. They certainly weren't rotten, so I just cut off the wilted ends and used what was still good. Why am I showing this? Don't let a little wilt on your green onions keep you from making dinner.
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| The green onion with the wilted bits off to the side. |
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The next step is to basically add all of the ingredients to a mixing bowl and mix them up. She says to use a "dash or two" of garlic powder. I used 1/4 a teaspoon. She says to add salt and pepper to taste. I added 1 teaspoon pepper and didn't add any salt. I figured the fish would have enough natural salt for my taste.
When I formed these into patties, I did notice that the batter was a little loose. I'm glad I drained the salmon. There are comments on the original recipe where she suggests adding an alternative flour, but I didn't want to use one and while a little loose, they did hold together in patties. I wondered if decreasing the egg to just one would help with this. Sorry, I didn't get any patty making pictures.
I heated a tablespoon of coconut oil in my 12 inch covered saute pan over medium heat and carefully added the patties.
I put the lid on and set a timer for 5 minutes. When the timer went off, I flipped the patties, recovered the pan, and set another 5 minute timer.
While the salmon patties cooked, I made a quick cole slaw to have with my patties. I basically mixed up 2 tablespoons of olive oil mayo,1 tablespoon Paleo Powder, and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, and about 2 cups of pre-cut cole slaw mix to a bowl and mixed it up. Instant tasty healthy side dish in less than 5 minutes.
Once the patties were done cooking, I plated them with some of the slaw.
There is a little bit of egg accumulation at the bottom of the patties which you could cut off if you really wanted, but it didn't bother me enough to mess with it. There were some comments about this on the original recipe post, so I wasn't completely surprised by it as I was when I made these Crab Cakes.
Here's a close up of my quick Paleo Powder slaw.
Accessibility & Cost of Ingredients: You should be able to find all of the ingredients you need for this recipe at your "big box" grocery store. The salmon I used was I think about $2.50 a can. I recently checked at Costco, and you can get 6- 6oz cans of good quality salmon for $11.99. Canned salmon is a good thing to have on hand in your pantry. If you want to make the slaw, you can get Paleo Powder here.
Preparation & Cooking Time: It took me 10 minutes to prepare the patties to cook. I cooked the salmon patties for 10 minutes.
Clean Up: Clean up for this dish is super easy. Everything (one bowl, cooking utensils, and measuring spoons) except for my saute pan went into the dishwasher.
The Paleo Review: Thumbs Up! These patties have a simple salmon flavor. I really didn't taste a lot of the egg which I was worried about. While there's something to be said for simplicity, I felt like they needed a little something. The next time I make this recipe, I might try using Sunny Paris seasoning from Penzey's. If I have more time, I'll make some cocktail sauce or tarter sauce to go with them. They are pretty filling. One patty was really enough for me. They hold up pretty well in the fridge for leftovers the next day.
If you're feeling a little lazy and come home to a near empty fridge, or not, give these patties a try.