We recently made some smoked fish. Over 30 pounds of it. What do you do with 30 pounds of smoked fish? You make approximately one crap load of various fish dips/spreads.
We ended up freezing a lot of it and sharing with family. It’s summertime. Fresh fish is important during this time of year. Because summertime.
I am going to give the recipe for 3 pounds of fish meat for the sake of simplicity. Most of us are not working with 30 pounds of fish and each batch we worked with was in three-pound increments (we did make multiple batches of our favorites though). We have a processing room in our barn. It is complete with air conditioning, sinks, and I even have a gas stove out there. This is much easier for us to work with bulk in a roomy and clean environment. Cleanup is also much easier than my kitchen at the house.
First, you take three pounds of shredded smoked fish. You can use store-bought. I have used salmon before when we lived in a development, before having the homesteading luxuries of trade. You can also make your own (here’s how we make our smoked fish).
Shredding is probably the hardest part. After shredding, add two tablespoons of lemon juice, twenty-four ounces of cream cheese, 3/4 cup of sour cream, two tablespoons of horseradish, and 1 1/2 teaspoon of hoisin sauce.
After adding all the ingredients, mix with a hand mixer. We used hooked attachments, but it is very doable with regular attachments.
This is our base recipe. This is the recipe I take out when we have guests and potential picky eaters. Our family likes flavor, and I personally appreciate anything a little spicy. I don’t dislike the base and I do use it, but I like to try different flavors to spice things up a bit sometimes.
When making different flavors and blends, we add half an ounce of seasoning in the whole three-pound batch and increase from there to taste. Not every seasoning combination needs the same amount because some are more potent than others. Here are some variations to the recipe we tried:
Jerk. We sadly only made one batch of this. We ran out of seasoning. I personally, would have loved to have added a bit more seasoning to this one, but again, we ran out. This one is awesome and one of my favorites.
Hot. We made a lot of this one. And We definitely added more than that half ounce because I’m crazy obsessed I like spicy flavors. We used cayenne pepper powder, smoked paprika, and garlic powder. Go with these seasonings to your personal taste as both are potent.
Frank’s Red Hot. Which actually turned out about medium. This was neat to try, but not my personal favorite. This is for the people who say they like spicy foods, but don’t actually mean it. Or people who are like my daughter. Who is five and also appreciates spicy food, but she’s five and cannot compete with mommy yet.
I teach and I’m off for the summer. I like this for sandwiches and cakes (crab cake like consistency). Once it’s made, especially in bulk, it’s easy to freeze this stuff and take it out as I need it. You can obviously use other fish. Salmon is pretty popular. If you try this, let us know what you think. If you have other ideas for seasoning, please share. I love cooking and trying new things.
Smoked Fish Dip
Ingredients
- 3 lbs. shredded smoked fish
- 2 TBS lemon juice
- 24 oz cream cheese
- 3/4 cup sour cream
- 2 TBS horseradish
- 1 1/2 tsp hoisin sauce
- Additional seasoning
- See entire blog post for measuring and suggestions
Instructions
- Shred smoked fish in a large bowl.
- Add all remaining ingredients.
- Mix with a hand mixer (hooked or regular attachments).
- Store in fridge.
- Serve next day.
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