The Penalty Box

I keep forgetting to keep an eye out for fish sales and I wanted to get some fish back in my diet. This one was an easy recipe to put together, and while it didn’t exactly use high quality fish, it was fish nonetheless. Plus it turned out pretty good. Good enough that I forgot to take pictures, so uh, use your imagination.

So here’s what you’ll need to make salmon burgers.

• 2 teaspoons of chopped parsley leaves (or a couple small bunches)
• Half a red onion, diced
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of panko bread crumbs
• Few cranks of black pepper (or about a teaspoon)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 lemon, zested
• 4 tablespoons Dill Mayo (recipe below)
• 2 cans of salmon (try to find skinless and boneless - you’ll have to judge whether the extra price is worth your time picking out bones of the regular cans)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (you can use olive oil if you want)

The cooking part:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. In a bowl, combine parsley, onions, eggs, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, lemon zest and dill mayo together. Add the drained salmon and mix together. It’s best to use your hands here, and go slow so you don’t fling bread crumbs everywhere. Make 4 palm-sized patties (or however big you want them) and set aside on a plate.
3. Take frying pan or a skillet, put it on medium heat with the two tablespoons of oil. Brown both sides of the patties. If you don’t have a big enough pan, do it in batches. Then put them on a cookie sheet or oven safe pan/dish and stick them in the oven for 5-10 minutes. The salmon is already cooked, so you just want to make sure the eggs are cooked.
4. Serve on buns with dill mayo. Add dressings to your liking, but other than lettuce, I think these things go pretty good just with the dill mayo.

For the dill mayo:

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fresh chopped dill (use dried if you need to, fresh tastes better)
• Pinch of paprika (use cayenne if you want more kick)
• Large pinch of salt
• Couple cranks of black pepper
• Optional: couple teaspoons of yellow mustard

Combine these ingredients together in a small bowl, stirring with a fork or a whisk. If it looks too liquidy, add more mayo. You want it to spread like mayo, not be a sauce.

This recipe should make 4 burgers and more dill mayo than you should need. But the dill mayo is good on other stuff too. Happy eatings!