Home52 Editorial Lead Arati Menon flakes, pats, and fries her way through this Salmon Croquettes recipe from Toni Tipton-Martin's 'Jubilee.'
On Play Me a Recipe, your favorite cooks will walk you through their most treasured recipes, offering all the insider tips, stories, and tricks you won't get from a written recipe—and you'll be right alongside them, every step of the way. Feel free to pause, jump back, or navigate the steps via the podcast chapters.
If you're cooking along, here's the recipe we're making today. Go ahead and grab the ingredients below (Arati starts listing them at 1:25) before starting the episode.
Toni Tipton-Martin's Salmon Croquettes
Serves 4 to 8
Ingredients
Lobby Time Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Arati Menon: It's no secret that I love a good croquette.
Arati: Hi there, I'm Arati Menon. Welcome to my Brooklyn kitchen, where I am all ready and set to cook my first ever Toni Tipton-Martin recipe, and I'm super excited. I'm going to be making the salmon croquettes from her newest cookbook, Jubilee. The full recipe for this is linked in the show notes for whenever you need to refer to it, but it's a really simple recipe, and I promise to go step by step so you can just follow along. If you need to take a break, though, just hit pause and come back when you're ready. I'll be right here.
Toni Tipton-Martin actually adapted this recipe from a 1936 cookbook called Eliza's Cookbook by Beatrice Hightower Cates. She says she was surprised when she first came across it to find that instead of the more heritage roux-based white sauce to bind the salmon mixture, it called for eggs and cream. Now, for this adaptation, she lets go of the cream but uses eggs and bread crumbs or cracker crumbs to bind the cooked flaked salmon. I particularly love this recipe because it comes together in a single mixing bowl, and it's super simple to follow along. If you are lucky enough to have tartar sauce in the fridge today, you're gonna want to serve it alongside, but also feel free to serve with whatever creamy zingy sauce or dressing you have on hand.
Arati: For these crispy melt-in-your-mouth croquettes, you're going to need cooked salmon, either tinned or fresh, celery, onion, a lemon, salt and pepper, cayenne if you're in the mood for it, eggs, bread or cracker crumbs--I'm actually going to use panko breadcrumbs because I have a bunch of it lying around at home--flour for shaping the patties, and oil for frying. Go ahead and gather all your ingredients. Again, they're listed in the show notes and in the podcast chapters, and I'll meet you back right here.
(musical interlude)
Arati: So first up, I'm going to dice half a cup of onion, and by my calculations that's about one small onion. I'm going to use a white onion, but honestly, you could use yellow or red. It's really up to you. Typically a large onion will give you about a cup and a half, so a small one is all you need, really. I do have rather funny-looking tool that my mother brought me from India to mince, but today I feel like mincing by hand. It's a really funny looking tool. It's very old-fashioned. It's hand cranked. It looks really odd. She basically told me that there would come a time when I wouldn't know what I did without it, and she's had the last laugh because I use it all the time.
But anyway, I think that should do. We're going to need to mince some celery next, and the recipe calls for 1/4 of a cup. By my estimate, that's a stalk of celery. That should be plenty, actually. So get out a stalk of celery and finely dice it.
It's no secret that I love a good croquette, or cutlet, as we call them in India and, well, South Asia. I think my favorite will always be the good old potato croquette, which somehow has fallen out of favor, or seems to have disappeared from modern imagination but it's so delicious. But a close second is probably a salmon or salt cod croquette. Yeah. Okay, now I'm going to juice my lemon to get about a teaspoon of juice. Okay, all right.
I'm so excited to be cooking from Jubilee, and I'd like to think that this is just the beginning of me cooking through the book. Toni Tipton-Martin, of course, is an award winning cookbook author and historian, a scholar, a wonderful storyteller who does incredible work in challenging the stereotypes around--and giving agency to--generations of African-American cooks and sort of recognizing their contribution to Southern cuisine. And Jubilee is a substantial work. It's more than 300 pages and 200 years worth of African-American cuisine. Most importantly, though, to me, Jubilee is a--it feels like a celebration. It feels like a celebration of joy and creativity and the warmth generated by cooking and eating together. Actually, I was about to pick another recipe for the evening. I was gonna make her creamy, decadent peanut soup, which she says is both a starter or a meatless main. But I kind of felt like fish today, so the soup can follow.
Arati: Now comes the fun bit, the mixing. So I've got a medium sized mixing bowl here, and my two tins of salmon. I'm gonna put that in there. Fresh fish is delish, but when it comes to convenience, you can't beat canned. I'm going to use a fork to break it up.
So that's all flaky and separated. And now I'm going to add the minced onion and the celery in there. They both go in there. I'm gonna add the teaspoon of lemon juice. Ok, give it another mix to make sure it's evenly distributed. I have a little onion left on my chopping board that I'm gonna plop in. Okay, give it a mix and salt it as needed. And then a few cracks of black pepper, half a teaspoon is what the recipe calls for. And if you're in the mood for some cayenne, you can use a half a teaspoon of that, which is totally optional, by the way. Not for me. I love my pepper and chili.
Okay. Now we need two large eggs, which I have here. I'm gonna crack them and give them a whisk. Just beat lightly. Gonna pour this into the into the salmon mixture, give it a nice mix. Okay. And then last of all to go into the mixing bowl, your breadcrumbs. The recipe calls for a cup and a half. I love the Japanese panko breadcrumbs. I love that panko are sort of flaked, and therefore they have a slightly larger surface area, which makes them get even crisper. Okay, that looks good.
Arati: So I'm actually now going to dust my hands with a bit of flour. Flouring your hands, of course, makes things much easier when you're holding and shaping food. So Tipton-Martin actually says to use a fourth cup measure to scoop the salmon mixture and then form into disks. I'm actually going to eyeball this. And when making croquettes, what I tend to do is make it into a ball first before then flattening to make it more disk-like or patty-like. I've always done it this way. For some reason, making the ball first seems to hold the shape better, perhaps because it's shaped twice over. Ooh, it's just started raining. How lovely!
Anyway, don't worry if the mixture hasn't bound together perfectly, you can always at this point, throw in some extra bread crumbs for hold. In South Asia, we call croquettes cutlets, and the cutlets that we make in India and, in fact, also in Sri Lanka--we usually use boiled mashed potato as the binder, and it's only at the end when shaped into a disc that the cutlet is dipped into an egg wash and then coated with crumbs. Sometimes we coat it in semolina, which is, of course, flour that is typically made from hard durum wheat.
So this is not just a really easy weeknight dish to put together. It also makes for actually great cocktail party food or tapas. All you need to do is make them smaller--I'd make them much smaller--and you can make them ahead of time so you can shape them, crumb them on, and store them covered in the fridge, and then fry them up just before serving. My mom actually cooks them all the way through, and then, um, either just heats them with a little bit of oil to quickly crisp it back up or sticks them in the oven to warm up. Because it's just my husband and me eating dinner tonight, I'm going to make about six of these. The recipe says it makes about 16.
I love the tactility of making these by hand. It's the same reason why I like tearing herbs as opposed to chopping. I like feeling food with my hands.
Arati: And we're ready to get frying. So I've got a large skillet here. It's a 12 inch nonstick, but you could use a 10 inch. Let's get that going. I'm going to use canola oil to fry my croquettes. You'll want about half an inch of oil swimming on the surface of the skillet. Turn the heat up to a nice medium high. You need to get it to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In general for frying, I like to use an oil with a high smoke point. Canola is my top choice, but you could use peanut oil or even olive oil, which is a safe choice for most pan frying.
Okay, this is going to take a minute to heat. So I'm going to get a plate to unload my croquettes onto, and I'm gonna line this with a paper towel to absorb the excess oil. So one way to test if the oil is hot enough--of course you could use a thermometer. But if you're like me, you probably don't have one. And you can make do by flicking in a few breadcrumbs. Ooh, sizzle! And if they sizzle but not burn, you're good to go. So I'm gonna get my six croquettes and I'm gonna load them up. The idea is not to overcrowd your skillet. You want to space them out. We're going to let this fry for three minutes on either side. If they're smaller, two minutes. So while that fries, let's take a little bit of a break and then come back in time to flip them over.
Arati: And we are back. So before the break, we placed our croquettes into our pan with sizzling oil, and we can probably check to see if it's time to turn them. Let me check on one. Oh, that's beautiful. Golden brown. Just the color I need to see. Now when turning these, first of all, be careful. (Laughs) Secondly, what you could do is use a spatula and use a fork to hold it while you turn it over with the spatula. Whatever you do, don't do what I've done in the past and use your finger to steady the croquettes as you're getting ready to turn them. Terrible idea.
So now we've turned them, and we're gonna let this sit for another 2 to 3 minutes. I actually make a version of this croquette or cutlet with mixed veggies. I combine a bunch of veggies, carrots, green beans, cauliflower, potato, celery. The more veggies, the merrier. I dice them super fine. The other secret ingredient--well, not so secret ingredient--that goes into that is curry powder. It's perfect for meatless Mondays, or meatless any day. These look beautiful. Also, don't worry too much about bits flaking off. That's totally fine. It'll all get eaten in the end.
And these are done. Off they go onto my plate with the paper towel. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm not about to wait till dinnertime to try one of these out. So I've got a big bottle of Maggi hot and sweet tomato chili sauce in lieu of the tartar sauce that I'm gonna liberally poor and get myself a fork. I cannot wait to dig in. Wow, that thunder is loud.
Okay, this is gonna be warm, but I can't wait. Let's get a big bite of that. Mmm. Oh, my God, this is good. Wow. Okay, so the beauty about these croquettes is that even though they hold together when cooking and hold their own, for some reason, the minute you pop them into your mouth, they sort of come apart and you can taste each of the ingredients almost separately. The celery and onion give it a nice fresh energy. And the cayenne goes in for that little kick, which is perfect. I'm glad that the recipe makes enough to serve 4 to 8, because this means we're gonna have croquettes for days, which is fantastic.
Arati: And that's a wrap. Thank you so much for making these salmon croquettes with me today. Don't forget to rate and review us, so I know how yours turned out. And I'm very interested in knowing what you're dipping sauce of choice was. Remember, we'll be playing new recipes weekly, so if you have a favorite Food52 recipe that you'd like to hear us or me make, just email it to us at podcasts@food52.com. Thank you for your company.