29 Dec
Salmon Piles
When I’ve eaten salmon burgers at restaurants, they’ve always been so yummy. I was delighted to find a recipe to make my own salmon burgers at home!
I followed all the directions precisely. The patties looked perfect! I was pretty proud of my work by the time the patties were grilling away and looking forward to a tasty salmon burger.
When it came time to flip them, I floundered! Jay tried flipping two and I tried flipping two. As soon as they flipped, they fell apart.
We were able to pile them onto a bun and eat them, but it sure wasn’t a true burger.
Looking back, my biggest mistake was not paying more attention while reading the accompanying article. The subtitle, which I had completely skipped, says “Grilled fish burgers can be a welcome alternative to the usual summer fare — if you can keep them moist and prevent them from falling apart.”
Reading further, a paragraph addressed this issue:
There was one more problem to solve: The fish burgers fell apart when I flipped them. Oiling the spatula before flipping the burgers helped, as did oiling the cooking rack and refrigerating the burgers before grilling.
Notice even the author admits that those tips simply “helped”, they did not prevent or fix the problem!
- Salmon and Tuna Burgers (Cook’s Illustrated, Summer 2006, p. 54)
Posted by Sheri on 29.12.06 at 6:42 pm
Ha – you floundered when making fish burgers!
I think refrigerating would have definitely helped – I know it does when I’ve made crab cakes in the past.
Posted by Julia on 29.12.06 at 6:42 pm
Sorry for the bad pun.
We did refrigerate them 15 minutes, like the recipe said, but maybe we should have left them in even longer! We also think the grill may not have been hot enough. Either we have less patience than we did in the summer, or it takes longer for the grill to heat up when it’s cool out.