Smoked salmon tartare is perfect for lunch, brunch or a snack. It’s smoky, tangy and deliciously smooth.
Smoked salmon tartare can just as easily be called smoked salmon salad. It’s a simple mixture of smoked salmon with some fresh and pickled ingredients that balance out the smokiness and saltiness of the salmon.
My dad makes an amazing smoked salmon tartare. Although I wanted to make his recipe I didn’t have all of the ingredients and as you know I am all about using up what I have on hand. So, I decided to make it my own and switch a few things up.
Luckily it still turned out great, although I will definitely still post my dad’s smoked salmon tartare recipe one day soon.
The best part of both recipes is that they both work great with sushi-grade raw salmon as well. So, if you’re not a fan of the smoked flavour you can still have a delicious appetizer, lunch or snack.
If you are making this smoked salmon salad as an appetizer it goes very well with some of our other favourites:
Preparing Smoked Salmon Tartare or Salad
Ingredients
Smoked salmon: Smoking is a preparation method and sometimes a preservation method where a fillet of salmon is first cured and then smoked. It gives the salmon a different texture and flavour and preserves the salmon to prevent it from spoiling as quickly as fresh salmon.
Egg: Eggs are laid by many different animals but chicken eggs are what we use in this recipe. Eggs provide protein, fat and many other nutrients and therefore are a healthy part of our diet. Here they are used as a binder.
Yellow onion: Onion is a very common vegetable that is used both raw and cooked in food preparation. It has a sharp flavour when raw that often sweetens once cooked. There are many varieties of onions, some that are milder than others. We use the common onion or yellow onion in this recipe.
Capers: A bud of a plant, capers are small round-ish buds slightly larger than a pea. They are picked as a bud, before the caper bush blooms, then pickled. They have a very unique flavour profile that is slightly salty with a distinct bitter/sour flavour. They are often used in sauces, and dressings and work great in fatty dishes.
Olive oil: I use olive oil for this recipe because of its mild flavour. Olive oil is the fat extracted from olives. The least processed is extra virgin olive oil, which I use in this recipe.
Dill pickles: Usually made using pickling cucumbers, which are a small variety perfect for this purpose, which are covered in vinegar and water brines along with dillweed, garlic and spices including peppercorns.
Paprika: I use sweet paprika, or just paprika which is most commonly found in grocery stores. It is not sweet in the sugary sense, but compared to its spicy and smoked siblings it is definitely the sweetest of them all.
How to Make Smoked Salmon Tartare
The tartare is a simple dish though it does require a bit of chopping. The goal is to make it a smooth and cohesive dish so small pieces are key.
Step 1: Dice the ingredients
All you have to do is chop the smoked salmon into a fine dice. I like to start more structured slicing in one direction, then the other. After that rock your knife to chop it into finer pieces.
Dice the onions, pickles, and capers as well.
Step 2: Assembly
Combine the chopped ingredients in a medium bowl. Next, add the paprika, oil and pepper. Lastly, if you are adding the egg yolk, separate the yolk and the whites and just add the yolk to the bowl.
TIP: Reserve the egg whites for tomorrow’s omelette or scrambled eggs for extra protein.
Step 3: Combine the ingredients
Stir all of the ingredients really well. Make sure that all the ingredients are distributed evenly. It’s best to let the smoked salmon tartare rest in the fridge for a few hours before serving to let all the flavours marry and become one cohesive dish.
Substitutions
Smoked Salmon: If you don’t like smoked salmon or simply want to create a different variety of this tartare, you can use raw salmon instead. Just be sure to add salt as the fresh salmon will not be salty naturally, like smoked salmon is.
Dill pickles: If you don’t have dill pickles on hand you can use sour pickles instead.
Yellow onion: The sharpness of the onions creates a nice balance to the smoked salmon. You can however achieve a similar effect with red onions, which are just slightly milder in flavour.
Serving Smoked Salmon Tartare
This dish is excellent on a slice of fresh baguette topped with a few more capers. You can also top it with some fresh onions or chives, or radishes and green onions, or even fresh cucumbers and dill. Just leave it as an open-faced sandwich. You don’t want the bread to consume the smoked salmon salad.
If you’re serving smoked salmon tartare as an appetizer or tapas style, serve it with or on crackers. You can also serve all the abovementioned additions in separate bowls so your guests can make their preferred combination cracker sandwich.
Let us know in the comments if you have any other questions. And if you like this recipe be sure to leave us a five-star rating below.
Are you looking for dinner ideas? Check out our recipes:
Smoked Salmon Tartare Recipe
Equipment
- Medium bowl
- Knife
Ingredients
Instructions
- Start by chopping the salmon. You want to get it as fine as possible.9 oz smoked salmon
- Next, finely dice the onion, pickles and capers. Similarly to the salmon you want them to be quite fine.10 Capers, 1 oz Dill pickles, 0.5 oz yellow onion
- Lastly, combine all of the diced ingredients in a medium bowl with the olive oil, paprika, ground black pepper and egg yolk.1 tbsp Olive oil, 1/8 tsp Paprika, Pinch of pepper, 1 Egg yolk
- Serve on a fresh baguette or your favourite crackers.
