Fish Spread

brnthumbinfl

19 years ago

anybody make their own smoked fish spread??????

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Kelli Culpepper
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
I went on a ramppage looking for "the perfect recipe." This is what I found:
When it comes to smoked fish dip, I believe that less is more. While some prefer to make more of a smoked fish salad similar to tuna salad by incorporating onions, celery, lemon juice, etc., in my opinion these things distract from the natural goodness of the fish. Keep it simple.

Ingredients:

1 pound smoked fish (kingfish, sailfish, amberjack, almaco jack or yellow jack)
1 pint Hellmans mayonnaise (no Miracle Whip, no diet or reduced fat mayonnaise)
salt
pepper
Club crackers

Manicure the smoked fish by removing and carving off the skin, dark meat and bones so that you have pure white chunks of fish. Flake the fish out finely pulling it apart with your fingers. Slowly add mayonnaise a spoon full at a time and stir into the fish. You will not need all the mayonnaise - probably only about a half of a cup to a cup. The idea is to use the mayonnaise to bind and reconstitute moisture into the smoked fish so that you have a mixture that just holds together so that it can be spread on a cracker. Most commercial fish dips use far too much mayonnaise to stretch out the smoked fish and add weight and volume. Taste the dip and season to taste with salt and pepper bearing in mind that the saltiness of the smoked fish will vary with the amount of salt that the fish absorbed in the brining process prior to smoking. Serve with Club crackers and/or celery sticks and a knife or spoon to spread the dip. Hint: If you can dip a cracker in the dip without breaking the cracker, then you've used too much mayonnaise.

On the side, you can serve hot sauce, sliced jalepenos and/or lemon wedges on the side for those that like to kick it up a notch.

We use chopped up jalepenos - very, very good

Also found this one:
What Are You Smokin'?
We have a smoker at home that is a little rickety with age, but still turns out some pretty good stuff. Of course, we dont have access to the fresh fish there that we have here in Apalachicola, so weÂve never really put it through its paces. IÂve chiefly used it for smoked salmon (the only way I can stand to eat farmed salmon is smoked) and smoked cheese (Monterey Jack will stand up to the heat of the smoker without melting and it is wonderful smoked!) I wrote more about the ins and outs of smoking in this column.
Here in Apalach we have a bounty of fish but no smoker, so Jer went to the hardware store and bought a Brinkmann Gourmet smoker and Grill Â a shiny red contraption that is much more stylinÂ than the cardboard Little Chief back in Bloomington. But basically, they work the same. An electric coil keeps wood smoking with minimal heat so the food cooks slowly (you can smoke food on a regular grill, but itÂs hard to control the heat and you want a SLOW cook so the smoke can permeate the food before it dries out.)
So, with a whole mullet and a good chunk of grouper in hand, I got online to find some fish smoking recipes. There is more involved than just throwing the fish into the smoker Â it needs to soak in a flavored brine of some sort and then you dry it out so it develops a shiny hardened skin. A good basic resource is here.
I cobbled a brine recipe from several sources, and used 2 quarts water, Â¾ cup kosher salt, 1 cup brown sugar, 2 bay leaves, Â½ cup distilled vinegar, peppercorns. Soaked the fish for about an hour (and I think I would do longer next time) and then put it on a rack under a ceiling fan to dry for another hour. Then we popped it into the smoker and a little over 2 hours later, voila, smoked fish.
I like my fish a little smokier and a little drier, but for most people I imagine this was pretty near perfect. We celebrated by eating some right away, hot and flakey, on crackers with lemon. Yummm.
But smoked fish dip was my real goal. Seafood-2-Go here in Apalach makes a dynamite smoked grouper dip Â rich and creamy with a jalapeÃ±o bite. Trouble is, itÂs got about a bazillion fat calories and my addiction to it is one of the reasons I am trying to lose some weight right now. So I improvised. Flaked some smoked grouper into a bowl and added 3 tablespoons of light Helmans, some chopped red onion, and some chopped jalapeÃ±o, plus salt and pepper. It was very good, but maybe because the fish wasnÂt smoky enough for me, it didnÂt have the same addictive quality. Grouper is a funny fish to smoke in any case, because it isnÂt very oily and it doesnÂt get that rich smoked flavor. I wonder if they add liquid smoke over at Seafood-2-Go?
Anyway, the grouper dip was fine, but the smoked mullet dip was FABULOUS. There are a many, many recipes for this spread out there, but the one I used comes from a favorite cookbook: Gulf Coast Cooking by Virginia Elverson. This book covers the gulf coast, from Florida to New Orleans and Texas to the YucatÃ¡n with gorgeous photos and luscious recipes. Though I toyed with the recipe a bit, it was close enough to the book that it deserves credit. ItÂs simple to make once you have the smoked fish which, honestly, you donÂt need to smoke yourself.
However you come by it, flake two cups of fish, skinned and boned, and combine with 4 tablespoons light HelmanÂs (Elverson used the full fat stuff), Â½ cup chopped celery, Â½ cup chopped red onion, Â½ cup chopped red bell pepper, 1 small clove of garlic, chopped, 3 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, 1 heaping tablespoon of chopped pickled jalapeÃ±os, salt and pepper. Mix it all together and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours to meld the flavors while you go to the beach, then come home and eat it on crackers for dinner. WOW!
Good Luck!

Where are you? We are in the Port St. Joe/Mexico Beach area and there's some very good fish dip going on around here.

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Fish Spread

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Kelli Culpepper

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