Salmon Biscuits: A Recipe

Last night we were heading home from piano lessons, and I was thinking that I hadn't been shopping in a while, didn't have much on hand, and needed to have a diner plan by the time we got home. I tried to remember what was in my pantry, freezer and fridge, and all I could remember was canned salmon. And then I remembered my mom's Salmon Loaf (which may have been called Salmon Roll, but I remember it as loaf), which was basically some kind of salmon mixture inside a biscuit dough loaf. I figured I could throw something like that together quickly, make a quick sauce and heat up some leftover broccoli from the other night.

Here's what I did. I didn't measure anything really.

1-6 oz. can Trader Joe's Alaskan Pink Salmon (doesn't have the skin and bones in it, easier to work with), drained, reserve liquid
2 cereal spoon glops (that's the technical term) of mayonnaise (not too much, you're not going for a sandwich here, just enough to keep it together)
1 1/2 soup spoon glops of sweet pickle relish
medium pinch of dried dill
salt and pepper to taste
squirt of lemon juice

Mix it all up to make the filling. Then I used Bisquick (that's right, I used biscuit mix, the reduced fat kind) and made 1 1/2 recipes for biscuits. It was the end of the box and I had to use my newly reacquired algebra skills to figure out the milk ratio for whatever mix I had left in the box.

I rolled out the dough fairly thin (about 1/4 inch) and used the biggest biscuit cutter I have in my set of biscuit cutters that we all got for Christmas one year (you know which ones I'm talking about). It's about 3 1/2 inches across. It's pretty big. Anyway, I got about 10 of that size biscuit out of the dough and I put a spoonful of the salmon mix on one side of each circle.

Then I folded the other side of the biscuit over and used a fork to press it shut. They looked like little tarts.

I baked them at 375 degrees for about 15 min. I set the timer for 10 min, and they needed about another 5 min.

For the sauce, I made a roux with butter and flour, then whisked in the salmon liquid and added chicken broth because there wasn't much from the fish. Once that got going, I added some milk, but not very much, just to make it kind of creamy. I added a squirt of lemon juice, pepper, salt and dill and stirred until bubbly and thick.

There was enough for each of us to have 2 1/2 of the biscuits, and Ruby ate about one, Sam ate two whole ones, I had 2 1/2, and Squig ate the rest, which was about 4 1/2. We just had them with a side of steamed broccoli, so we probably ate more than we would have if we'd also had a starchy side. I had thought of making mashed potatoes or something to go with the sauce/gravy, but we were in a hurry.

They were so good. The kids all loved them and my non-gravy eaters had sauce on every bite.

We'll definitely be making these again.

Some other ideas I had were to put in some sour cream or cream cheese in with the salmon for a different taste. You could also do this with your favorite biscuit recipe. It seems very flexible. You could do chicken, instead, and get something like the chicken rolls made from refrigerated crescent rolls, only without the partially hydrogenated garbage they put in those.

Anyway, this is a good recipe when you need to throw something together from whatever you have on hand. We always have canned salmon on hand, and if we don't have biscuit mix, we always have the stuff to make them from scratch. If you use a smaller cutter, they would also make a nice little appetizer or finger food for a party.

I meant to take a picture of all the cute little biscuits on the pan, but we were rushing to eat, and I forgot.

They really were cute, though.