I really like smoked salmon cream cheese. I was horrified when Panera (St. Louis Bread) pulled it from their regular cream cheese flavor offerings. My standard there was an asiago bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese – now I settle for the sun-dried tomato. When I got the smoker I knew that smoked salmon would be something I would have to attempt.
This isn’t cold-smoked, preserved salmon. It’s hot smoked so it is essentially cooked in a smokey environment. I run the smoker at about 230° F. I’m using frozen salmon fillet pieces that are about 8 oz each and slightly more than 1" thick at the thickest point. Depending on the size of the piece of fish it takes about 45 minutes for them to cook thoroughly and get a nice smokey flavor. Previous experience tells me that after an hour the fish starts to dry out and get crunchy – not good.
Smoked Salmon Cream Cheese
- 1 8oz piece of hot smoked salmon
- 1 package reduced fat cream cheese (you could use full fat), softened
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp dried dill
Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until a nice creamy texture. Serve on bagels, toasted french bread, heck serve it on anything you like. It’s delish.
Saturday night we ate this as an appetizer on some homemade sourdough baguette slices that had been slightly toasted. A good precursor to the rest of the BBQ.