Just Put Some Chips on It

I was scrolling through Instagram recently when a piece of salmon posted by my friend Kate Consenstein caught my eye. What was this? A fillet slathered in mayo and covered in potato chips? It seemed a little wrong, but then if Kate, who knows seafood better than most, was making it, perhaps it was secretly a lot right?

Alaskan cooks are always combining wild food with self-stable, lowbrow pantry items. See: muktuk and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt or saltine salmon or wild berries suspended in Jell-O atop a layer of box sheet cake or crab boiled in 7-Up or agutuk with Cool Whip. For my book The Whale and the Cupcake, I spent a lot of time with Alaska’s community and church cookbooks, especially those from the mid-20th century, and I can attest to the generous use of both mayo and crushed potato chips, especially in seafood casseroles. But this recipe? It felt bold.

Kate lives nearby, so we went for a socially distant mid-winter walk and talked about that feeling you get in the late winter, when you’re trying to come up with a new way to cook last season’s frozen salmon on a Tuesday night. This recipe is aimed right at that. The one Kate made was developed by the brilliant Maya Wilson—of The Alaska from Scratch Cookbook fame—for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon, a brand stewarded by Alaska fishermen. They commissioned Maya to come up with recipes that could be made simply with just a few ingredients found anywhere, even at a sparsely stocked rural grocery store or a gas station.

And so I tried it. And I loved it. The flavor has a tangy fish-n-chips vibe. The crunch satisfies. I tested several kinds of chips. Lay’s Salt & Vinegar mixed with a handful of Kettle dill pickle packs just the right punch, IMHO. Do not use fancy thick-cut chips. They don’t crush right. I also tested with my favorite Kewpie mayo, but that really didn’t stand up to classic Best Foods. Kate likes to stir a little Barnacle Foods Bullwhip Hot Sauce into the mayo. I always take her advice. Here’s my take on Maya’s recipe.

First published in Edible Alaska issue 19, Spring, 2021.