The Affordable Canned Seafood Swap That Makes Delicious 'Crab Cakes'

A really good crab cake is a restaurant delicacy worth writing home about. Salty, umami, and rich, they are worth their weight in gold to seafood lovers everywhere. Unfortunately, they can be rightfully expensive, even if you opt to create them at home. However, if you're willing to make a seafood swap, there's an easy and sumptuous way that only takes a few inexpensive ingredients, the first of which is a can of fully-cooked salmon.

At its most basic form, a salmon cake, or salmon patty, only requires three main ingredients. Take a can of salmon, one egg, and about a quarter cup of flour or a half cup of breadcrumbs. Pick out any bones and remove the skin from the salmon, then mix the ingredients together in a bowl with salt and pepper to taste. At this point, you can add a wide variety of spices or additional ingredients to give your cakes more richness or seasonings. Lemon juice, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, green onions, Old Bay, hot sauce, and parsley are all common additions.

Once the ingredients are all incorporated, form small patties using about a half cup mixture for each. Heat oil in a pan and fry the cakes until firm and golden brown on each side. After that, you can serve them as beef-free burger patties, to top salads, with dipping sauces as an appetizer, or as a high-protein main course. The flavors will be full of umami notes, with a pleasing flaky texture, much like crab cakes. Considering that salmon costs about $3 per can, and the other ingredients usually cost less than that, you'll end up with an affordable seafood dish that still tastes delicious, even without crab meat.

A simple salmon-for-crab-swap may sound odd to some, but canned salmon is backed by over a century of history. Old school salmon loaf, which is a similar concept but formed into a meatloaf-like mass, has been around since at least the late 1890s. Salmon cakes or patties, however, rose to popularity during the Great Depression.

Canned salmon was a big industry in Alaska during the late 1800s. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, the Southern states began to struggle badly. The common diet was high in corn, leading to malnutrition and conditions like pellagra, causing people to break out into red lesions. It was at this point that salmon became a staple in Southern food history.

In order to help its ailing population, the U.S. government made it so that a can of Alaskan salmon cost less than a nickel. Because of this, there was a rise in recipes using this canned fish, such as salmon cakes. Some of the oldest recipes were just as simple as the one previously mentioned, although some use crackers instead of breadcrumbs.

If you make salmon cakes at home, that doesn't mean you need to keep them old-fashioned, though. Adding some garlic and dill, then topping it with crème fraîche, can create a smoked salmon canapé flavor profile. Add horseradish, cheese, and lettuce, then put it all on toasted bread for a savory sandwich. Make mini versions and spear them with toothpicks as a perfect event finger food. This is a time-tested treat that is bound to still be a crowd pleaser today.