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Cast away: Delicious alternatives to salmon with the Game Chef

17 January, 2025

So many people eat cheap, farmed salmon pumped full of chemicals. In this article for My Countryside magazine, the Game Chef asks, why, when the fish usually fed to said salmon are a far more delicious – and ethically and environmentally sound – option?

Back in September, I was lucky enough to be spending a week sporting the wilds of the Isle of Lewis. We were staying at the fabulously remote Morsgail Lodge, the first place I have ever stayed that I felt that a Macnab was a very tangible possibility. You can hear the chattering grouse and see the occasional distant movement on the hill from your bedroom, and a few paces down the lawn finds you casting your line on the loch and river beyond. And deep below those black waters, nonchalantly swaying against the flow lies the most difficult prize of all, or so we told ourselves, as we vainly but gamely thrashed at the low water remnants of a couple of weeks’ fine weather.  

It is testament to the enduring optimism of the angler that despite a recent study finding that it now takes an average of 30 days on the water per salmon landed, still we flog away, diligently, restlessly, and never hopelessly. 

I still remember the days when we would allow a first fish to be kept, and the great kerfuffle of the fish kettle, and the dressing, and the cooking, and the reverent ceremony of the eating. Those days are, of course, gone, but the salmon somehow still remains on that table, a lamentable irony to the fact that the reason we can no longer reasonably expect to catch over the course of a mere week, is very likely looking up at us out of that fish kettle.  

A packet of salmon in the supermarket now costs less than a fancy coffee, and in order to achieve this the hormones, antibiotics and pesticides need to be in full flow. Despite this, the drive and demand for the cheap production of popular protein sees aquaculture as the world’s fastest growing food sector. 

As Countryside Alliance members, I expect we would all already know the damage this creates to the localised environment, wild fish stocks and thus our sport – and would have adjusted our buying patterns accordingly. I know many people who would no sooner put a piece of flabby farmed salmon in their mouth than they would an industrially farmed chicken (although it’s remarkable how often this is overlooked when it comes to smoked salmon). So, what’s the alternative – if we don’t want to support this tremendously detrimental form of farming – but still want to have a bit of fish? Of course there is the Chalk Stream Trout, a success story in its own right so great it needs no championing. There is also the prospect, although not an option yet, of land-based aquaculture for Atlantic salmon; indeed Norwegian company NMS is looking at an enormous site on the Isle of Lewis itself, a project estimating a production of 90,000 tonnes of salmon annually, housed in 224 tanks each 22 metres wide and crucially – as a closed house system – eschewing the need for the above cocktail of chemicals and eliminating the possibility of harm to the wild fish.  

Sounds great – until you start to wonder what this eye-watering amount of ravenous carnivorous predatory fish are going to eat. The plant-based soy and fats that make up much of the pellet-based food can only go so far in putting flesh on an animal this high up the trophic scale, the rest being made up, of course, of other fish. Vast, vast quantities of other, perfectly edible, delicious and nutritious wild fish. It takes on average 3kg of these other fish, (mainly sand eels and crustacea swept from the West African ocean, but also sardines, mackerel and herring) to make just 1kg of farmed salmon, essentially meaning that up to three times the amount of people could have been fed had they just eaten those bait fish in the first place. This all makes even less sense, when you realise that this is an industry that saw one farm last year suffer just over 80% mortality, and the total estimate by the Scottish governmental regulatory body last year was 17 million – yes million – dead fish. Which by the above calculation means up to 50 million tonnes of wild fish were fed to a fish that was dead and buried before having a chance to reach a plate.  

That’s an awful lot of protein, both feed and developed flesh going straight into Scottish landfill.  

Despite all this, the British public are no more willing to stop eating cheap farmed salmon than they are battery chicken and, in an industry – according to Marine Scotland – worth £1.8 billion annually and creating 8,000 jobs, it’s just too large and profitable a machine to simply drop strict regulation upon, and the conservational bodies (except for the excellent Wild Fish) are disturbingly silent on the issue. Even the RSPCA gives the green light with its endorsement from its food production branch Freedom Foods and let us not forget that they have in a statement said they are happy with the killing of seals in order to protect the farmed fish. It’s amazing Packham hasn’t piped up: I wonder how his adoring fan club would take to him telling them that they must stop eating farmed salmon – not likely! 

The hope for the future, as far as wild fish is concerned, is that investment will move towards land-based aquaculture fed on plant matter and wild fish trim and waste only – something the more scrupulous companies are already moving towards, but they are not there yet. We all know we need to source our protein smarter, and as far as I am concerned industrially farmed salmon is just not worth the environmental burden. Besides this, and aside from the fact that I don’t want to eat something that in order to even survive must be pumped full of all sorts of unnatural chemicals, those bait fish are completely delicious. 

I have for years now shifted my hankering for a smoked salmon starter in a Scottish lodge to something equally as delicious, eaten with clear conscience, and in the knowledge that what’s on my plate isn’t part of the reason of what’s not on my hook. So, please do give these recipes a try, and next time you may be planning your menu for your trip across the border, they would make just as delightful a dish as that much mistreated king of fish itself.

 

Kipper, potato, pickled cucumber and horseradish salad

The kipper of course simply being a smoked herring, a fish with good stocks and a high nutrient (not to mention flavour) bang for buck. 

Serves 4 as a starter or light lunch

Ingredients

  • 2 kippers 
  • 8 cold boiled new potatoes 
  • 80g fresh watercress

For the pickled cucumber: 

  • 1/2 large cucumber 
  • 1 tbsp sugar 
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt 
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar 
  • 1 handful fresh dill, roughly chopped 

For the dressing: 

  • 3 tbsp olive oil 
  • Zest and juice of 2 lemons 
  • 2 tbsp good quality horseradish cream 
  • 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper 
  • Pinch of salt

Method

  1. To make the pickled cucumber skin, deseed and finely slice cucumber into half centimetre slices. 
  2. Sprinkle over the salt and sugar and leave for 10 minutes to allow the juices to leach. 
  3. Pour off half the juices, then add the vinegar and chopped dill and mix well. Set aside. 
  4. To make the dressing, mix all of the ingredients well together and set aside. 
  5. Cook the kipper either under the grill, in the pan, oven or on the BBQ for 7-10 minutes, until the flesh will prise easily from the bones, then set aside. 
  6. Once cool, flake the meat from the spine, being careful to pick out any smaller pin bones, and set aside. 
  7. When you are ready to assemble the salad, chop the potatoes into four wedges, and place in a large bowl. 
  8. Add the kipper meat, the drained pickled cucumber and dill, along with the dressing, mixing gently but thoroughly. 
  9. Take a good handful of the salad and place in the centre of the plate, finishing with a few sprigs of fresh dill to garnish. 

 

Sardines in oatmeal with lemon aioli and a tomato, onion and mint salad

Serves 4 as a starter or light lunch

Ingredients

  • 8 large or 12 smaller sardines, filleted 
  • 80g plain flour on a plate 
  • 100g course oatmeal on a plate 
  • 2 eggs beaten and seasoned well with salt and pepper, in a shallow bowl 
  • 100ml olive oil

For the lemon aioli 

  • 6 tbsp good quality mayonnaise 
  • Zest and juice of 1 lemon 
  • 2 crushed garlic cloves 
  • 1 pinch of salt

For the salad 

  • 2 large ripe tomatoes, sliced into thin rounds 
  • 1/4 red onion, finely sliced 
  • 2 tsp sugar 
  • 2 tsp red wine vinegar 
  • 8 sprigs of mint 
  • Salt and pepper 
  • Good quality olive oil

Method

  1. For the sardines, first dip the fillets one by one into the flour, dust off a little, then into the egg and finally oatmeal to coat all over, then set aside. 
  2. Mix the aioli ingredients together and put to one side. 
  3. For the salad, mix the onions with the sugar, vinegar and a pinch of salt, and set aside whilst you cook the sardines. 
  4. Heat the oil in a large shallow pan and fry the sardines on a medium high heat until golden brown and cooked through, if you need to do this in a couple of batches simply put the cooked fish to rest on a warm plate whilst you cook the rest. Sprinkle with salt and pepper once cooked. 
  5. To serve, arrange the tomatoes on four plates, leaving enough room for the sardines. Top the tomatoes with the onions and their juices, then the mint, and finally a drizzle of the olive oil. 
  6. Add the sardines to the plate, along with a generous dollop of the lemon aioli.

 

Image credit: Rachel Bibby

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