Because everyone knows that you eat with your eyes first. So, the better it looks, the better it tastes.
Welcome back to NCHPAD's nutrition lab! I'm J, and today, we are making salmon cakes with
tzatziki sauce. Really quick, simple recipe; cooking time is going to be about 10-15 minutes. So, you're
looking right around 20 to 30 minutes prep and cook time, combined. What you're going to need
one can of salmon, grated parmesan, garlic powder, dijon mustard, mayonnaise, one egg,
italian seasoning, lemon juice, Worcestershire, bread crumbs, and a green onion. The first thing is I
drained the canned salmon, put it into a bowl. I have some grated parmesan her,
garlic powder, some dijon mustard, some mayonnaise, this egg,
italian seasoning, worcestershire sauce, the breadcrumbs, and we're going to save a
little bit, in case we need some more later. And some lemon juice.
Give this a mix. I just put all the ingredients into one bowl and just stirring to incorporate.
So there's that. Let's cut this green onion, real quick.
Alright, we're gonna let that sit. Give the breadcrumbs some time to soak up all the
the moisture. So for the tzatziki sauce,
I have some plain yogurt; you can use any kind of yogurt you like. I picked plain non-greek,
because it was just a little bit more milder on the flavor. I got a little bit of dried dill here.
We'll add a little bit of lemon juice.
And then this cucumber, we will peel and then grate. So, this taziki sauce is real versatile.
It's a light, fresh-tasting sauce, which can be used on salmon cakes, crab cakes, if you want to
do like a gyro, you could put it on a burger with a little bit of feta cheese, but overall, it's a real
versatile sauce that will go on any cut of meat. When I make tzatziki sauce, what I like to do is
take the seeds out. They hold a little bit more liquid. So it just tends to make your sauce a
little bit runny. So if you take the seeds out and then grate it, it'll save you a runny sauce. And so,
just to de-seed the cucumber, I'm just taking my spoon. I'm just going to run it in the middle, here,
and just kind of scoop these seeds out, right here. So if you've never had tzatziki sauce,
you're going to expect something real light, real fresh. It's going to be real
bright because of the lemon juice and also, have freshly grated cucumbers and the dill.
So to grate this cucumber, I'm going to use these smaller holes here.
You're more than welcome to use the larger holes on this side.
This really kind of depends on if you want a chunky sauce or not so chunky sauce.
Just be careful when you get to the end, here, to not catch your fingers in the grate.
So there's your grated cucumber. There's a lot of liquid in the bottom there.
What we're going to do take this and squeeze some of that liquid out.
Put that right there in the tzatziki sauce. Give that a stir. The nice refreshing sauce to use on
on any protein, really. Roughly about five minutes, uh, really simple, really quick. Add a little salt.
And there's your tzatziki sauce. So I got my pan set,
uh, on a medium-high heat. I'm gonna put a pair of gloves on and we'll make these salmon patties.
So you just want to kind of form it like you would a meatball; just roll around your hands
until you get to a ball shape and then what I'll end up doing is kind of tapping it down, like this.
and just keep rotating it around until you get a nice circular shape, into the shape that you
want. Do the size like this, if you want to. Have the little high sides and make it look professional.
Put a little extra virgin olive oil on the pan, here. Pro-tip, whenever you're sauteing anything in a
pan always best to lay the food away from you. Put it closer to your body and then let it fall away
from your body. If you lay the food going towards you, there's a possibility of the oil splattering
and then getting hot oil all over yourself, and that's not fun. So we'll saute this about
medium-high heat, anywhere from three to five minutes, until you get a nice golden crust on it.
We'll flip it over, do the same on that side for about another three to five minutes,
and then we'll pull it off the heat and it'll be ready to go.
So now, we got a nice golden brown on both sides. That means the salmon's ready. Turn that heat off.
Go ahead and plate this.
So, for presentation purposes, you really want to wow your friends, use the rest of those
green onions that you use for the salmon cakes, and what i've done is i cut them on the bias,
which basically means cut them on an angle. So instead of cutting them straight, like
this, what i've done is I've taken my knife at a 45-degree angle and then made the slices like so,
and what that does is gives you these nice kind of diamond-shaped pieces of onion versus
these little circular pieces. iI just looks a little prettier and it just kind of ups your
game of presentation, because everyone knows that you eat with your eyes first. This is
the salmon cakes with tzatziki sauce. My name is J from NCHPAD's nutrition lab. The recipe
is down below in the comments. Please let me know what you guys think, and we'll see you next time!