Salmon burgers

For a brief period of time, fresh Copper River salmon is available in the Bay Area. This time is now, so I promptly purchased a whole salmon. We prefer our salmon filleted, which is not hard. After filleting, there is always some meat left over on the bones - scrape it out with a spoon. The leftover meat, and maybe some additional meat from the tail end of the fish provide a nice excuse to make salmon burgers. In fact, those burgers are so good, that I am considering transforming the entire fish into burgers.

Ingredients, quantities are approximate:

1/2 lb fresh salmon chopped finely
1/2 sweet onion, sauteed
2 TBS capers
1 TBS Dijon mustard
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
1/2 cup (or more) panko crumbs
1 garlic clove, chopped finely
a good pinch of salt
oil for pan frying

In a bowl, mix all the ingredients. I prefer salmon to be in small chunks, no larger than 1/4 inch each, some smaller - the salmon will bind everything together.

Heat a pan on a medium heat, add just enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. When the pan is hot, shape salmon into about 3/4 inch thick patties. Pan fry the patties until it is just cooked through. My guess is about 5 minutes per side. Do not rush the cooking, stay on a medium to maybe medium high heat, otherwise the salmon will overcook and the burgers will be dry. A seasoned cast iron pan works very well as it retains lots of heat.

Copper River salmon burgers

We ate the burgers with raw cauliflower and tahini yogurt sauce.

Tahini yogurt sauce

This is my variation on tahini sauce. It goes very well with raw vegetables as a dip, meat, fish, falafels, or you can snack on it on its own. Thin it down with more yogurt and you have salad dressing. The picture below does not do this sauce the justice, this is one of the best if not the best and one of the most versatile sauces I know of.

Ingredients:

2 TBS or more tahini
3/4 cup or more jogurt
juice of one lemon
1 TBS ground cumin
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
a pinch of salt

Mix the ingredients well in a bowl. Adjust the seasoning and thickness as desired. You can thin the sauce with yogurt, and you can thicken it with tahini.

Mostly consumed tahini yogurt sauce