Salmon is good for you, most nutritionists will agree. We only buy U.S. wild harvested salmon for our family; you should research and make your choices based on the information available.
Because we’re on a budget, as most of you probably are, we try to catch Alaska wild-caught salmon on sale at the local chain grocery store and buy it in bulk. Having lived in Alaska for many years, we’re pretty good at vacuum sealing packages of salmon for freezing.
Perfectly cooking salmon involves having pieces of a similar size and shape packaged together, which typically leaves some thin ends and trimmings. I package those together and label them “Salmon Scraps” to be used for a salmon “salad” or dip like we did this week.
You can cook these scraps in a variety of ways, but I typically toss them into a little coconut oil in a small cast iron skillet and stir them until they are done, but not overdone. This can even be done a day or two before you intend to serve it, because it will be a cold preparation.
Although I vary my recipe from time to time, I typically break up the cooked, cooled salmon in a bowl and add finely diced onion and celery, along with whatever spices we feel like at the time. Sometimes we make it with homemade mayonnaise, and sometimes we take the easy route and use ranch or bleu cheese dressing. Most of the time, we use some kind of spicy seasoning and lemon pepper. Thyme, basil or dill can be substituted successfully.
In the case of our last “batch,” we ate it for lunch with toasted thinly-sliced bread and homemade cream cheese several days ago. There was a small bowl left, which I saved and today added a finely chopped hard-boiled egg and fresh-picked jalapeno pepper to make it stretch for the two of us for a light lunch. We served it with crackers, avocado slices and sliced fresh orange.
Who would have thought that the “ugly” scraps of the salmon filets would provide so much delicious nutrition? Stewardship of God’s provision includes using every bit of food that we can to fuel our bodies for His service – and to waste as little as possible by planning ahead.