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The third largest river in Alaska, the Copper, is currently the most famous worldwide for its salmon. Bristol Bay, famous for the world’s largest run of Sockeye salmon, hosts salmon from several rivers, as they mill around, waiting for the right time to enter any of dozens of streams to their spawning grounds.
The Copper River Sockeye is the most highly sought fresh salmon in the United States. The Copper River King is said to rival that of the Yukon King in flavor. Less well-known than the Copper’s Reds, the Kings are noted for their extremely high oil content.
The Copper is fished all summer long, from mid-May into September. Many of its tributaries’ runs come in at different time, making the commercial fishery, at its delta in the north Gulf of Alaska, durable. Upstream, there are Native, subsistence, personal use and sports users. Princess Lines passengers can opt out for a King fishing trip on one of the Copper’s tributaries. Natives and subsistence users have fish wheels along the bank above the confluence of the Copper with the Chitina. Urban and rural subsistence and personal use fishers also dip nets into the waters, bringing out their annual harvest.
The Copper is under increasing pressure from every direction, but the number of fish caught annually there over the past 40 years has stayed remarkably close to the same from decade to decade. The first year I caught a salmon at the Copper River, was as a commercial gillnetter, in 1974. The most recent ones were on Thursday, as a personal use dipnetter.
I brought home my biggest King since the last century, 38 pounds. One of the fillets will be eaten at my mom’s 93rd birthday party later this summer.
The other one got subdivided for a few meals.
No matter how cleanly one fillets a salmon that size, there is scrap fish left on the carcass. For years, after I fillet several salmon, I’ve scraped away the rest of the flesh and turned it into ceviche.
If you don’t know what ceviche is, you’re not alone. It is a pickle dish that uses citric acid as its catalyst. It should only be made with the highest quality fresh seafood ingredients. Not just for quality, but for safety.
The history of how people made what we now call ceviche before the late 16th century is sketchy. Even though its invention is often credited with having been the meeting of Peruvian natives’ pickling methods and the conquistadors’ citrus products, I can’t imagine coastal people anywhere with citrus cultivation not having discovered the dish earlier.
I make a lot of different ceviches, but fresh lime juice and fish are the basics of all of them. A few get garlic. A very few don’t get onion. Some are hot, especially if I have fresh, home-grown peppers. Some have citrus chunks thrown in. Some have mango or papaya. Recently, I’ve started adding an ounce of tequila.
Here’s the recipe for my Copper River King Salmon Scrap Ceviche:
2 cups salmon scraps (cut to a maximum 1/8 x 1/2 x 1 inch size)
1 mediumish Bermuda onion
1 cup chopped plum cherry tomatoes
juice and pulp of 6 to 8 limes
1 cup chopped lemon basil tops
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
150 arugula flowers
1 oz. tequila
2 tbs wildflower honey
Ingredients before cutting:
Ingredients after cutting:
Place in a glass bowl. Stir with a non-reactive spoon until thoroughly mixed:
Cover and refrigerate. Stir every 4 hours. Ready in 14 to 24 hours. Keep refrigerated for up to a week.
Serve on any kind of cracker, dried or toasted bread. It goes well as an appetizer. At parties, ours sometimes disappears before we have a chance to get any.
29 Comments
Move over cod– I want that salmon ceviche with my tapas!
ET, you move my heart n stomach . . .
Incredible pics (my fillet knife quivers with desire), I recall the joys of taking down a big ass salmon or halibut from long ago in the food biz.
Ceviche, for the left overs, I have no additions, other n spices one might prefer for that different national flavor. Basil, oregano, cilantro, rosemary, etc.
I would also offer that, in the biz we would use the scrap salmon to make mousses . . . . eggs, whites, garlic, onions, herbs, sometimes cream/nutmeg, other seasonings . . . food process it all smooth, roll it in plastic wrap or stuff it into gresed molds, n steam bath it or bake it in water bath to cook it.
Make it a hunnert ways, serve it a hunnert ways.
But salmon was and is, always king, copper river or not.
What a great diary, thanks hoss!
I’m hongry, it’s yer fault.
*G*
Rcc’d.
Dammit all, I’m STILL hongry.
*shakesfistatETnSalmon*
*G*
Never mind smoking that stuff . . . arrrrrgggghh!!
Gorgeous, now I need that for breakfast.
I have heard of ceviche, but I thought it was made with scallops. This looks yummy.
Absolutely love ceviche. Openly admit I have never had the salmon form, but this sounds stupendous, especially with the herbs!
I’m hungry.
I also love embellished fish stories, but you have photos to prove it. Actually the photos alone make this post worth looking at. Who is the really cute person? And also, who is the really cute younger person?
Recommended.
PS: You said “scrap.”
What a great post! Love showing the before and after prep of the ingredients — including the shot of the Copper River in the “before.”
This instruction is fun:
“Stir with a non-reactive spoon until thoroughly mixed:”
Just give me 24 hours notice before you stop by, Larue. We’ll slake your salmon hunger and then some.
Scallops are an ideal ingredient, preferably the small ones. I’ve used scallops, shrimp, greenling (the family of which Ling Cod is a member), Dungeness crab, halibut, rockfish and salmon as the seafood ingredient.
The ingredients should not touch anything metal. A wooden or plastic spoon is preferable for the stirring, a glass bowl for the “cooking,”
Acidic foods can react with some metals. That can cause contamination of the food.
OHhhhhhh that I could ET, oh that I could!
*G*
I’m preparing the batch of salmon for smoking right now.
What beautiful salmon which I love. Would like to have it really fresh like you can. Envious.
Oh, you had to frontpage this. I saw it earlier and had to wipe drool off my puter screen. I luvs me sum ceviche.
OTOH, strawberry season in mid-Hudson, which are particularly delicious this year. So there.
Can you ship me some of that smoked stuff?
Copper River salmon sells in Portland upwards to $35 in the market.
Drool away, eCAHN. First time I’ve been front-paged in ages.
Ask away, if you have questions on the Copper River or ceviche or…
We take good care of the fish. We bleed it and keep it in eddies in the river until we go back to the landing, where they go on ice in a cooler immediately.
Lovely, ET!
Closest Mr. Sunshine ever got to Alaskan fishing was Yellow Knife. [I know, not close at all!]
We enjoyed Copper River salmon this past week — baked, served warm with raspberries day one, chilled with dill sauce day two, mixed into pasta salad day three … and four … and anybody have a good Irish seafood chowder recipe? I’m thinking that’d be good for the little bits, too, with some mussels and …
Oh, I love ceviche. I’ve made it only out of scallops so far, but have high hopes of getting scraps from my local fishmonger for other variations on the theme.
Interestingly, I’ve not found raw fish to my taste, until I came across ceviche. I love lime & cilantro.
When I gave a concert in London, back in 2005, I brought 30 pounds of my smoked Copper River Sockeye there with me. Great present, and we used half at a concert after the party where we mixed Palestinian and Israeli beer together in pitchers.
Right now, I’m fanning a load of fish for the smokehouse, creating a pellicle before I start smoking the fillets and bellies.
We lost almost all our raspberries this past winter in a cold spell. First time that has happened to them.
One of the best aspects of living in the Pacific Northwest is the time of year when the CRS show up in our local fish markets. The halibut season is also fantastic. You can’t beat fresh CRS and halibut seasoned on the grill. Actually, the fresh fish we get here would make even someone that isn’t a seafood lover think twice. When you tire of the salmon or halibut, there’s always the king crab legs. If you have left overs any of these three tossed with a little brown sugar and lime and drizzeled with blue cheese dressing on a toasted baggette is heaven.
Wild raspberries grow along the roadside here in the tall timber, blueberries, too. Not a good harvest last year, maybe better this summer. Unless the black bears harvest first!
My last job in Seattle, before first moving to Alaska in the spring of 1973, was at Main Fish Co, which was at Pier 60. We offloaded trawlers at the dock every day. The company sometimes gave away huge bags of shrimp to the employees. The aquarium is there now. They were deciding how to tear down the Pike Street Market when I left in ’73.
Main Fish was owned by a Japanese family who had been interned in Idaho in WWII. They lost everything to the post-internment auctions, but got it all back through incredible hard work.
I have never been a salmon lover UNTIL I tasted Copper River salmon. This is the most delicious fish I’ve ever eaten. Unfortunatly, the price limits how much one can consume when fishing is not an option.