Episode 016 is a special Father’s Day Edition, where Taryn interviews her dad, Joe Kristof. Joe is an avid fisherman and they discuss all things salmon, including the different types, a little about wild salmon versus farm-raised salmon, and some tips for grilling salmon too. Joe also goes over three of his favorite salmon recipes – a grilled salmon, a smoked salmon, and a salmon cheese ball. All of these are family favorites that he’s perfected over the years.
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.
GUEST DETAILS
Bio: Joe Kristof is an avid fisherman who grew up fishing nearly every weekend with his dad, mom, and brothers, and has since fished in Alaska, Montana, Florida, Mexico, and many other areas in North America. He has grilled and smoked fish for decades for his family and friends.
Resources Mentioned
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Recipes Mentioned
These are the three recipes Joe discusses in the episode. He emailed them to me and I edited them for clarity, shot photos where applicable, and put them up on my website. Click the links below to be taken to each recipe!
Transcript
Taryn Solie: Hello grillers! Today’s podcast is a little different. I decided to do a Father’s Day edition and have a male guest on the podcast – my dad! He’s been cooking fish most of his life and has become really great at it so I invited him on the podcast to talk about that.
There are definitely some funny family jokes and banter in the episode, so I hope you enjoy it and also learn a little something too! We’re going to jump straight into the episode today, so let’s get into it!
Taryn Solie: Today on the podcast we have a very special guest. I am joined today by my dad, Joe Kristof. I wanted to have him on to talk about grilling and smoking salmon because I consider him to be an expert. He’s an avid fisherman. He grew up fishing nearly every weekend with his dad, mom, and brothers, and has gone fishing up in Alaska, nearly every summer for many years.
He grew up eating fish and then continued the tradition and I grew up eating fish. So I’m excited to have him on to talk about some of his tips. Dad, welcome to the podcast.
Joe Kristof: Thanks a lot. Looking forward to it.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. I’m excited to have you on, I think this will be a fun, uh, Father’s Day kind of themed episode. So, um, why don’t you tell the listeners just a little bit about your fishing background and food background and grilling background.
Joe Kristof: Well, I started fishing when I was probably about five years old and my dad was a rabid fishermen so we fished every weekend. Our, uh, summer vacations were fishing trips to Canada, Montana.
And so, uh, we had a lot of fish back when I was young. And at that time, uh, there was plentiful fish, I mean, in Puget Sound and all the rivers, steelhead, the salmon. So it was effortless to fill your freezer with fish. The problem with that is that’s what we ate almost every day. So we had so much fish. We had fish cakes, we had barbecued fish, we had poached fish.
And so as a kid, uh gosh, by the time I was a teenager, I was just sick of eating salmon and steelhead. And I went away to college and then into the air force, came back seven years later and had been away from salmon and steelhead eating, uh, for those seven years really, and really had a desire to get back into eating some fresh fish.
My mom, who’s a great person. Unfortunately, she’s passed away. Her cooking of salmon though- my dad didn’t do the cooking really on the salmon. It was my mom. She over cooked that salmon so it was so dry. When I got back into eating fish, uh, I said, boy, I want to, the fish I eat, I want it to be delectable, tastes great, et cetera.
And so I really launched into, you know, how do you cook fish? How do you season fish? How do you smoke fish? How do you make salmon balls? Uh, you know, all that type of stuff. And I think I found, uh, at least for me, my palette and my family’s palette, a really good, uh, approach to cooking fish and seasoning salmon.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. And I will attest to that. I, I, my dad is the one that I go to for any sort of like, dad, what do I do with this fish? I don’t know. I want to make sure I don’t get dry fish because I remember grandma’s cooking. And while I loved her dearly, she overcooked a lot of things.
Joe Kristof: She over cooked cookies, they were rock hard. She, over cooked meat, they couldn’t be cut. The worst thing she would overcook is liver. So, uh, yeah, so I was very motivated that when I put fish on the barbecue or what, however, I cook the fish, and I like it best on the barbecue, that it would be cooked right. And there, there are some tricks to doing it. Uh, and there’s also some information regarding the type of fish that you’re cooking that makes a huge difference. And maybe if you’d like, I can talk about some different types of salmon, really the benefits of those and, and in cooking them the differences.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Joe Kristof: There’s really six different types of salmon. There’s a full King a spring Chinook or king, a silver salmon, which is called a Coho salmon, a Sockeye, a chum salmon, and then a pink salmon, which is called a Humpy salmon.
I only eat four of those six salmon. The Chum and the Humpy, some people, uh, eat them. Uh, they’re softer flesh, more white meated. The Chum is real oily. Um, so I just stay away from those two particular types of salmon. The other four, uh, have some unique attributes to them and the attribute that’s really, the key is the amount of fat that that fish has.
And so the least fatty of those four, the fall King, spring Chinook, silver salmon, Sockeye, is the Sockeye. So when you cook a Sockeye, because there’s no fat layer between the flesh and the skin, you have to be spot on. If you overcook it at all, it’s going to be dry. Okay. The one with the largest fat layer is the spring Chinook.
And that’s the fish that you hear all about, the copper river salmon from Alaska. That’s the spring Chinook. It comes down, Alaska, you know, makes a big, Alaska Airlines makes a big deal of it, flying it down here in the spring time, it goes for like $90 a pound sometimes.
Joe Kristof: Well, the reason it’s so good is that fat layer. And you can tell the flat, fat layer, uh, on a salmon between the flesh and the skin. It’s the gray material-
Taryn Solie: Oh!
Joe Kristof: -between the flesh and skin. That’s the fat. And the, uh, spring Chinook or copper river salmon has a very large fat layer in there. And so what happens is, the way I typically cook salmon is I’ll put its flesh side down to sear it, okay. Then flip it over onto the skin. And what I’m going to do now with that heat is push that heat up through the skin, into the fat, which then pushes the fat up into the flesh.
And since I’ve seared it, it blocks the, uh, fat from, you know, exiting the flesh. So the fat stays in the fish and it just makes it succulent. I mean, just superb. Uh, the silver salmon, Coho salmon, and in the Northwest here, we see a lot of that, uh, in, uh, Costco or whatever. Um, they have a medium level of fat in it and, uh, that would be my second choice really.
Uh, and then the fall Kings don’t have the layer of fat that the, uh, spring Chinook do. And the fall Kings to me, carry just a little unique taste. I don’t know if I want to call it a little gaminess to it or whatever, but, um, they have a little different taste at least to me. And so any of those four though, if cooked right and seasoned correctly can just be stupendous.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I hadn’t realized that there was that much of a difference, particularly. Was it the Coho you said that has very little fat?
Joe Kristof: No, the Sockeye salmon.
Taryn Solie: The Sockeye, the Sockeye. Yeah. I hadn’t realized that that- that they didn’t have the fat and how much that would impact the cooking because that’s everyone, what everyone is afraid of is I don’t want to over cook and dry out this really nice fish that I just bought.
Joe Kristof: Right. Right. And, and there’s actually a couple other things to consider when you think about over cooking fish.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Joe Kristof: Um, so imagine if you had a thick steak and a thin steak. If you put them both on at the same time and cook them the same amount, those steaks are going to be dramatically different. One is going to be maybe rare and one’s going to be over cooked.
Well, if you look at a fillet of salmon. Okay. Half of a salmon, there’s a thicker portion, and then as you approach down to the tail, it starts to get thinner and thinner and thinner.
Taryn Solie: Right.
Joe Kristof: The tail portion, for kids, is the best because there’s no bones, probably the first two segments. That you would cut from the tail forward. There’s no bones in that. So those are great kid pieces of salmon.
The problem is when you cook them, if you put the whole salmon fillet on at the same time, you’re going to over cook that tail section. And forward maybe one or two.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Joe Kristof: So really what you have to do is look at cooking fish and say, you know, the thickness of that fish, I need to consider that as I time, the amount of time on that barbecue. And that will help you, uh, not over cook, you know, those thinner portions. And you’re always going to have them unless you just buy steak, salmon steaks. You know, if you buy a fillet and probably to be honest with you, if you’re not a fisherman, your best source for good fish is Costco.
It’s the cheapest, and, uh, it’s fresh. The only caution I would give with Costco fish is they sell farmed, raised fish too- salmon. Um, I stay away from, totally away from, farm-raised fish. Here’s why- the flavor just is not there. And for a few more dollars, you’re going to have a much better flavored fish, uh, in, uh, wild fish.
The other thing is, that people don’t understand is, that farm raised fish, when it comes out, they fillet it. It’s gray, it’s not pink. They’re putting color to cause that fish to be pink.
Taryn Solie: Really?
Joe Kristof: And stuff. Yeah. And so people don’t know that. And if I’m sure if they did- because their fish, they’re feeding those, uh, fish pellets, you know? And so, um, I would recommend staying away from farm raised fish, but you know, if that, if the fish is good to your palette, you know, go ahead and do that.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. It’s interesting because I think a lot of people, you know, when you see a fish recipe, sometimes the photos show this, you know, the whole side of a fish all cooked at once, but it can be really hard to do that and have all of the fish tastes really good because of exactly what you’re talking about, where you’re going to have the tail end, possibly overcooked.
And the, the part that’s, you know, closest to the head might even be under cooked. So it’s what I’m hearing you say is it’s best to cut it up, even though there’s a beautiful presentation with like a whole side of fish.
Joe Kristof: Right.
Taryn Solie: To cook it and have it be cooked to perfection, you really want to cut up the fish to- and cook it in separate pieces.
Joe Kristof: Yeah. I mean, if you were, if you had a barbecue that had different, um, Uh-
Taryn Solie: Temperature zones, kind of?
Joe Kristof: Yeah. You know, maybe you could pull it off, but I would rather have the fish cooked correctly. And then if I wanted to put the steaks in sequence, so it looked like a fillet for a presentation type of thing, that’s what I would do. Because I guarantee you, if you had the presentation to fillet and it was over cooked, maybe it looked good, but it’s not going to taste- sections of it aren’t going to taste very good.
Taryn Solie: Right, right.
Joe Kristof: One other consideration to think about when you’re looking at fish. Fortunately, uh, I fish, I give Taryn fish and she’s a lucky gal.
Taryn Solie: I am lucky!
Joe Kristof: But, um, if when you buy fish, if you smell that fish and it smells like fish, don’t eat it.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Joe Kristof: It’s an older, you know, I mean, don’t eat it. When I smell fresh fish, I can’t even smell anything. There’s no smell at all to fresh fish.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, that’s a really good point and a good thing to consider. Like if you have maybe kept your fish too long, and now it’s bad. Cause I have had that happen before and I’m like, Nope, that I can’t eat the fish, which is a big bummer. You don’t want to waste that.
Are there any other tips you have before we maybe start to get- I know you’ve got some recipes, some of my, like our family’s favorite recipes, but before we get into that, I want to make sure you get through your tips.
Joe Kristof: Um, no, you know, I think that’s pretty much, you know, the background information as it leads into, you know, looking at different seasoning or recipe approaches to cooking the fish. Um, again, barbecued is my favorite, but I know a lot of people bake it in foil, and that can be very good too.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Joe Kristof: So, uh, the nice thing about barbecuing though, is I can track the cooking of that fish very closely. When it’s in foil, boy, that- and foil accelerates the cooking process too.
Taryn Solie: Right, traps in the heat.
Joe Kristof: And so you can’t look and I’ll tell you as we go through some of the recipes, how I check for doneness in the fish.
Taryn Solie: Well, what you do is you put your thumb that has no feeling on it, on the fish. So you can’t, you don’t burn- that doesn’t count. Most people have feeling in their thumb, Dad.
Joe Kristof: That’s one approach you can take, because over 65 years, or 60 years of cooking fish, I can actually just touch the fish-
Taryn Solie: I know.
Joe Kristof: And tell if it’s close or right. Uh, but the best way, uh, to, for me anyway, to check, to see if a fish is done or approaching the right, uh, doneness, is I take a fork- now this is going to be after I’ve seared the, uh, flesh side, turned it over onto the skin side.
I’ve cooked it, you know, for a while, in my Traeger. And, um, and I’m, I’m going to talk a lot about the Traeger because I just, I’m in love with Traeger and Taryn and Matt, Matt’s the husband, has turned me on to that Traeger. And that’s really all I use. And I have a Weber Genesis that I used to use all the time, and I thought it was very good and it is a good barbecue, but you can cook fish using any type of barbecue. The Traeger, I think, for me anyway, doing the types of things I do, smoking fish, et cetera.
Taryn Solie: You have a lot more control over the temperature with a Traeger too, which is really important when you’re cooking fish.
Joe Kristof: Yeah, and so, but what I do is, I sear the flesh, turn, turn it over, wait a little while. And then I’ll actually go in with a fork. And in the thickest part of that fish segment I’ll pull back a flake of fish.
And I want to see dead center, when I’m going to take it off, dead center, I’ll just see a little line of opaqueness in that fish flesh. And when I see that little just center of opaqueness there, that fish comes off because it’s still going to cook for 2, 3, 4 minutes. And if you can time it like that, that fish will be perfectly cooked.
If you do not see any opaqueness in the center of that flesh. And I’m talking just a small little amount, you’ve overcooked that fish. Because again, it’s going to continue to cook for 3, 4, 5 minutes. And, uh, it’s just going to be a little on the dry side. And so, uh.
Taryn Solie: Do you mean, well you’re, so you’re saying opaqueness, but do you mean-
Joe Kristof: Translucent
Taryn Solie: The translucency. So not the, well you don’t, what you’re saying is you don’t want it to be all the way opaque. You want it to be a little line of translucent, uncooked, shinier fish in the middle. Okay. Yes. That makes sense.
Joe Kristof: And it’s not much, you don’t want, you know, a whole segment, big segment of that in there. It’s just dead center. Okay. I want to see that dead center being just a little translucent or opaque and that’s when I take it off.
Taryn Solie: So you, I mean, obviously you’ve been cooking for a really long time, um, but you don’t tend to go by temperature because you have so much experience looking-
Joe Kristof: Well, the problem is, and we have a Thermapen and I use it a lot on steaks because obviously I can’t pull back. You know, or I could cut open in, you know, into the steaks, but I hate to do that because you lose juices and stuff.
Taryn Solie: Right, exactly.
Joe Kristof: Um, but with the fish, I can pull a flake back the fish to look in there.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Joe Kristof: The problem with, uh, the Thermapen is the fish, many times, especially on a Sockeye’s, fairly thin. You know, it’s not a thick piece of meat. And so you stick that probe in there. And boy, you could miss, you know that probe could be too deep, too shallow
Taryn Solie: It’s a very small margin of error.
Joe Kristof: Yeah. If you’re cooking King salmon, which is thick, it may be two inches thick, different deal. That probe probably would work fine, uh, in something like that. But typically for sure, the Sockeye, which is thin. The silvers ca- you know, depending on the size of the, uh, Coho uh, might be a little on the thin side too.
So, um, I like that visual method because I know then for sure, I there’s no error there, for me.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. Yeah. No, that, that makes sense. So do you want to talk about what you put on your salmon?
Joe Kristof: Yeah. So over the years, uh, you know, and, and to be honest with you, the simplest thing that can still be very good, um, is just, uh, salt, uh, sea salt, pepper and some garlic. Whether it’s fresh garlic or powdered garlic, I mean, that’s the most base, uh, seasoning that can come out really good. Fish is cooked, so it’s, it’s cooked correctly. Uh, that can be very good, but. Where I’ve ended up and quite a few people ask me for this recipe, including my daughter.
So, um, here, I’m just going to run through it real quick and Taryn I think’s going to post this.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, what we’re going- he’s going to talk about a couple of recipes and I’ll, I’ll put links to them on the show notes page.
Joe Kristof: But I like, uh, typically my seasonings, I like a combination of flavors. I don’t just like kind of one or two, an explosion of flavors.
So here’s what I do. I use a half a cube of butter, half a cup of Paul Newman Caesar dressing. And you could use other Caesars dressing, but I use that. A half a lemon. Um, a large clove of garlic, pressed, uh, some salt to taste, pepper to taste, about five dashes of Tabasco sauce, and then two tablespoons of fresh grated Parmesan. And I put that on very low on the oven in a pan and-
Taryn Solie: On the stove.
Joe Kristof: On the stove, yeah. Yeah. Stove and, then that’s what I’m going to- when I turn that fish, I sear the flesh. I turn it over onto the skin. Then I’m just going to drizzle that and rub that over to keep that top layer kind of moist as it’s cooking.
Taryn Solie: When you sear it, are you, are you like salting the fish at all? Are you putting any oil on it at all before you sear? Are you doing anything other than like having clean fish?
Joe Kristof: Um, typically it’s a good idea- I don’t oil the fish, I oil the grates of the BBQ. So I’ll clean the grates, I’ll heat it up and right before I put the fish on, I’ll oil those grates so it doesn’t stick. I don’t put any seasoning on that fish until I flip it over.
Taryn Solie: Okay.
Joe Kristof: The worst thing you could do is to say, well, gosh, I’m going to season that fish for an hour before and salt it, uh, you know, put salt on it or garlic salt on it, because it’s going to pull moisture from that fish.
Taryn Solie: Right.
Joe Kristof: And that you don’t want to do. So the seasoning doesn’t go on until after, and then, you know, depending on it, because you’ll have some extra in all likelihood leftover, you may want to just put it on the table and somebody can drizzle some of this seasoning because it’s very flavorful.
Taryn Solie: It’s really good. Yeah.
Joe Kristof: Yeah. And so you could use this same recipe if you liked oysters and you used it-
Taryn Solie: It’s really good with oysters too, you’ve made it with oysters, barbequed oysters.
Joe Kristof: Uh, you know, you could use it on uh, halibut.
Taryn Solie: Shrimp.
Joe Kristof: Yeah, sure. I mean, you could use it pretty much on any seafood, really.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, it is. It’s very good. Yeah. Yeah. And I have asked for that recipe multiple times.
Joe Kristof: I actually sold it to her.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, right. So that that’s, I mean, that, that is kind of like the classic family recipe that, um, I have eaten for years. I mean, I don’t, I can’t, I’m trying to remember a time when we didn’t have it that way. It’s been a while for sure.
Joe Kristof: You know, another way you can cook this, is if, if you didn’t want it seared, another approach, again, it can be done in a Traeger or a regular barbecue, is to get a foil pan or make a foil pan, put the fish in it, and then just, you know, pour all that seasoning in there. So you’re kind of poaching that in that marinade. And that can be very good too.
Taryn Solie: How that’s yeah, that would also be good. How long? I mean, I know it’s going to vary by the ty- the piece of fish and how thin it is, but if I, like fish doesn’t take super long to cook.
What, what temperature are you typically cooking it at? And what, like how long. Are you typically cooking it? Like on average, let’s say, do you typically cook it for?
Joe Kristof: Well, well, on the Traeger, I would heat the Traeger to 325 degrees.
Taryn Solie: Okay, so a little bit on like lower, like not super hot.
Joe Kristof: Yeah. I mean, ideally, the ideal thing, this is how I like cooking my steaks now. And I’ll maybe start doing this with the fish, is I fire up both the Weber and the Traeger. The Weber I can bring up to like 650 degrees. Okay. And I sear on the Weber and then take the fish down to the Traeger. You know, and put it skin side down because then it’s going to be a consistent heat all around the fish. I mean, that would be the ideal, but that’s kind of the extreme I’m off the deep end.
Taryn Solie: Oh, well, you know, I mean, I think something like a searing or like for my steaks, I like to do a reverse sear.
Joe Kristof: Right.
Taryn Solie: Where I smoke it on the Traeger and then, um, you know, either on, I can do it on the Traeger, although it’s better on like the Weber or an oven, do the sear after it’s done like a slow cook. So I could see where that would be a good, um, a good way to cook fish as well.
Joe Kristof: But if I’m just using the Traeger, I mean, and it, maybe I’ll talk about just the barbecue too.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, I get it. Let’s get into that because I want to get into the other two recipes. Cause we’re, we’re, we’ve already been chatting for awhile here, so I want, I want to get into the other two, um, recipes that you want to talk about.
Joe Kristof: Yeah. Um, so the other one is, uh, I, I used to build my smokers and I do, I smoke a lot of fish. And so smoked fish is so good and it’s such a special thing for people to get, because right now probably smoked fish is $35 a pound, maybe $45 a pound.
Taryn Solie: And I didn’t realize that growing up, like we always had smoked fish at our family events and it was just like, oh yeah, who’s bringing out the smoked fish. But like that wasn’t- I didn’t realize that wasn’t normal, cause we just, we always had it. Like, there was always some in grandma and grandpa’s freezer.
Joe Kristof: Well, you know, the neat thing about, and I’ll use Costco as an example, I was just at Costco the other day, and I believe they were selling Sockeye salmon for either $14.99 or I think, or $12.99 a pound.
The difference in costs, there’s twenty-five pounds between that Sockeye and smoked Sockeye. Well if you buy that fish at Costco and smoke it yourself, you’re saving $25 a pound.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, it’s a lot.
Joe Kristof: For smoked fish. So, yeah. And it’s actually really easy to smoke fish. That’s what kind of perplexes me as to why it costs so much for smoked fish.
Taryn Solie: Well people are willing to pay for it. I mean, I think it’s intimidating, even though it might be easy or easy, like one of the easier ways to make fish, it’s I think it’s intimidating for people. So de-, de-intimidate it, Dad.
Joe Kristof: Well, I’ll de-intimidate it. The Traeger is a great tool for this. I’ve gotten rid of all my homemade smokers.
Taryn Solie: Oh you did? I didn’t know that.
Joe Kristof: The only smoker I use now, for smoked fish or making pepperoni sticks or anything, is the Traeger. Again, the key deal is the ability to control temperature.
Taryn Solie: Are they paying you to say this at all? Or is this-
Joe Kristof: No, I wish they were! I’m retired, I’m on a fixed income. Maybe send this to Traeger.
But, the great thing is the Trager, the starting temp on the Traeger is 165F. And that’s what I smoke my fish at. Is 165F for the whole time. And it’s so simple. I’ll just run through what you do. Is, so you take your fish, you cut it into segments, okay. The size as you’d want, you know, to, when you take it out of the freezer, out of the refridge, that you’d want to serve, you know, to yourself or a group of people.
You brine the fish and I’ll go through the brine, it’s very simple. After you brine it for 12 to 24 hours, you take it out, rinse it in cold water, put it on the Traeger rack and let it air dry. For four hours. Okay.
Taryn Solie: Without having the Traeger on.
Joe Kristof: Without the Traeger on. And you may, you know, put, uh, some cheesecloth over it. If you know, there’s flies around or whatever. Take the, uh, cheese cloth off, take the fish off and start up your Traeger.
165F, put the fish back on the Traeger, and just, you’re gonna again, do the same type of thing you did with cooking fish. You know, in the other method that I talked about, you’re going to just, again, I can just touch it and know if it’s done or not. But if you haven’t done it before, just open it up and see if it’s opaque.
Now here, it’s a little different deal because it’s cooking at such a low temp that when it’s just opaque, leave it on for another 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and now it’s going to be perfect. It’s not a high enough temp that’s going to continue to cook for an extended period of time. And so that’s smoking fish.
I mean, that’s simple and really anybody can do it. If you have a Traeger and you can adjust that temperature and do it at 165F, you can do it. Now, this kind of leads into, uh, the next recipe that is just dynamite.
Taryn Solie: And I will say too really fast. So like with, when you’re like smoking a fish, I think is a little easier. There’s a little bit more room for error when you smoke a fish, right? Cause it has that brine on it. And this next recipe, you’re going to talk about like, if you over smoke your fish, you can just use this next recipe and no one will be able to tell, because it’s, it’s a really good recipe. So why don’t you, I want you to talk about it a little bit.
Joe Kristof: So you can take that smoke fish and chunk it up with a fork, you know, just flake it out with a fork and you talk about a great hors d’oeuvre, a smoked fish salmon ball.
Taryn Solie: It’s so good.
Joe Kristof: Oh man, I, I’m- my mouth’s watering just talking about it.
Taryn Solie: Mine is too.
Joe Kristof: Um, so here’s, here’s what you need there for that. Very simple again. So smoked fish, a clove of garlic, a large shallot. Uh, I use dill. I know Taryn doesn’t like dill, but-
Taryn Solie: Well, I like it sometimes. In it- in a salmon ball I like it.
Joe Kristof: Some fresh dill, a block of cream cheese, and a half or a quarter to half fresh squeezed lemon. Soften that cream cheese, flake that smoked fish up and just mix it all together. Get some crackers. And boy, it’s just going to be the hit of the, uh, gathering.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. And I even, um, like I love my food processor because I can get things really thinly sliced or minced. And so I would even take like the shallot, and I really like shallot, but I would like biting into a shallot that’s a large chunk of it can be a little stringent. And so you could even do it like, uh, not the fish, but the garlic and the shallot, like in a little food processor to really get it finely, finely chopped and then mix it together with everything.
And like, for me, I try to eat dairy free for the most part. Um, but there’s vegan cream cheese that would still work quite well, um, in a salmon ball like this, and it would still taste great. It is so like, we have this, I think most Christmases, we have something along these lines.
Joe Kristof: Yeah. You know, one thing I forgot, that’s just another dynamite way to use a fish that you have after a meal or whatever. So that barbecued salmon, if you want a great sandwich, and you have some extra salmon leftover from a dinner, barbecued salmon. Take it and just like you would make tuna fish, use that salmon. And put it on a bagel or whatever bread, you know. Boy, talk about a great, uh, uh, sandwich. That makes a dynamite sandwich.
Taryn Solie: Or you could even do it over like a bed of like spring greens, if you, if you wanted to have something that’s, you know. I mean, there’s a lot, I mean, thankfully. I mean for me and us, I think growing up, you know, salmon is what we mostly had. And so that’s what I tend to be most familiar with. But there’s a lot, you can treat it in a lot of ways, like ar- like pre cooked chicken, right.
Where you are incorporating it, and you can even incorporate it into soup if you really wanted to, you know, There’s a lot of different things you can do. Well, we’re kind of butting up on here on time. I don’t want to go too long, but is there anything else that you want to say about salmon, about barbecuing salmon? If you want to like sing the praises of your Traeger a little more, you could do that.
Joe Kristof: Um, no, I think that covers, I mean, I have a bunch of other ways I use salmon, but these are, I think what I would say is the favor- my favorites, and actually everybody in the family, you know, all the way down to nieces and nephews. Uh, these are pretty much a hit every time we make them.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. And my kids really like, um, the, they mostly like the way my dad cooks it. Probably more than me, but I, I, I probably shouldn’t say that cause my dad will get a big head about it. But, but yeah, no, this has been great. I think people will find this very helpful.
Um, I am going to post links to all three of the salmon recipes you talked about, um, on the show notes page. Uh, those recipes will be on my site. Um, I may be able to find a couple of old pictures, uh, particularly of the smoked fish. Cause I know you used to smoke that up in Alaska when you and grandpa and your brothers would all go up there and you had a little portable smoker and you’d smoke it up there, just like racks and racks of fish.
Joe Kristof: That’s true.
Taryn Solie: So, um, I w- one last question. And so this is not salmon related. What, and I ask this to pretty much everybody is what is one of your favorite grilling recipes? Not, that’s not salmon.
Joe Kristof: That’s not salmon. You know, I think now, gosh, I mean, this kind of unique one, it’s not a meal or anything, but I make a, uh, pepperoni stick that has cheese in it. And man, those, I haven’t, everybody loves those things, myself included. So right now that’s probably, you know, again, it’s not a meal type of thing, but boy, they’re good.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, no, I love that. That’s good. My, my husband will attest to how good those are. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast, dad, this was really fun.
Joe Kristof: My pleasure. It was fun.
Taryn Solie: When I was over at, um, Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Andrea’s house.
Joe Kristof: Yeah.
Taryn Solie: And Uncle Jim was talking about the storage room that he did, you know, down in the basement and he was like, God, I’m storing, I stored all those photo albums from, from Mom from, you know, Grandma Cele.
And, and he’s like, you know what was in those photo albums? Pictures of fish. That is all that was in those photo albums! And then he took me, he’s like, come look at em!
So I went down and I looked and it was literally boxes and boxes of photo albums with like Grandpa holding a fish, Grandpa holding a string of fishes, Grandpa in the river catching a fish, fish on the rocks, fish in the river. Like it was, there was none, like hardly any of you guys, it was just fish. And I was like-
Joe Kristof: Well that’s pretty much how it was.
Taryn Solie: I know, it’s like ridiculous.
Taryn Solie: Did you ever think you could talk so much about salmon? My dad obviously has a lot of knowledge about the topic and a lot to say, and I hope you learned some things about grilling and smoking salmon. And probably some things about my family history in there too.
As for the recipes my dad mentioned, they really are delicious and I hope you try one or more of them. I’ve put them up on my website and will link to them in the show notes page. You can get there by either visiting Hot Pan Kitchen (dot) com and clicking on podcast in the main menu or just clicking the link that’s provided on whatever platform you’re listening to this podcast on.
Thank you for tuning in to this special Father’s Day episode and until next time, keep grilling like a mother.
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