New Patty Recipe

Chuck and Marsha's Fantastic Salmon Patties. ;~)
Recipe at
the bottom of the page.

I'm not a chef, and though I cook every day, I wouldn't call myself a great cook. I do what is necessary. I'm not much of a food person. I like it, but I'm not that excited about food. There are a few things that I really like, and salmon is one of those foods.

Chuck loves food. We both like fresh food and try to stay away from prepackaged and processed stuff. We also both like working together in the kitchen. But I have a lot going on in my life, so learning how to be a gourmet cook is not on my priority list. I don't think he cares. He has certain foods he's good at preparing, and I have some that I'm good at.

Last week he cooked a whole salmon. (He has restaurant experience, so he is a pretty good cook.)  We had it for dinner one night, and there was a lot left over. The next day we made tossed salads with salmon sprinkled in it for lunch, and fettuccine alfredo with salmon and mushrooms that night. There was still salmon left, and we needed to eat it before it was bad.

I looked for leftover salmon recipes, but didn't want to spend a lot of time or money finding ingredients just so we could eat this salmon and not waste it.

I found a recipe for salmon patties, but we didn't have all of the ingredients. Chuck suggested we just come up with a salmon patty recipe on our own.

Together we decided egg was a definite ingredient to hold it together. Then we added some bread crumbs. The recipe I found called for potatoes, but we agreed it didn't need to be something to stretch the amount of salmon, we needed to use it up quickly.

We formed some of the mixture into a patty and fried it in a pan. We thought it was OK, but it was a little too crumbly.
I suggested something like a thick sauce to hold it together better, and the only thing we had that made some kind of sense was tarter sauce. We fried one that way, and then did one with bread crumbs on the outside to make it crispy. Both were tasty, but we liked the one without bread crumbs on the outside better.

He thought we might be full from all of the taste testing before dinner was ready.

I ate the last salmon patty for lunch today. I do love salmon, but I think I'm good for a while. Well, I could probably still eat some smoked salmon and cream cheese with a great piece of sourdough bread. Oh, I do love that.

Here's an attempt at the recipe, but I really can't be sure how much of each ingredient we had except the eggs.

About 2 cups of baked, crumbled salmon (be sure you remove the bones.)
1/2 cup of Italian bread crumbs
about a teaspoon of tarragon
teaspoon or so of sage (I looked in his cabinet and chose whatever said "good on fish," but I'm sure these can be perfected more with other ingredients. We were using what we had.)
2 eggs
1/4 to 1/3 cup of tarter sauce
Combine all ingredients, form into patties. The patties should be a bit goopy, but you don't want a little salmon with your sauce, you want a little sauce with your salmon kind of goopy.
Fry in a skillet over medium heat, just long enough to have a nice golden brown patty.
Serve on bread of your choice with mayo or tarter sauce and fresh lettuce.