Rich, satisfying, and tasty, this Egg and Smoked Fish Salad makes a great lunch, appetizer, or filling for your keto sandwiches and tortillas. With 5 simple ingredients, this easy-to-make dish is a surefire hit and your new favorite whenever you need easy recipes for your busy life — or just want to whip up a quick meal yet not compromise your healthy lifestyle.
How to make this Egg and Smoked Fish Salad
This is once again a super easy recipe to make and very quick as well. Just mash boiled eggs, add the rest of the ingredients, mix, and dig in! It just cannot get any simpler than that.
For the fish, I recommend using white-fleshed fish. Salmon-type orange-fleshed fish works, too, but in my opinion, you’ll get a better result with white-fleshed fish, which is not that fatty as salmon. You’ll get an ample amount of fat from mayonnaise, so it’s better to use less fatty fish to balance out the richness and not make the salad too heavy.
Most of the commercial smoked fish is actually not smoked but just contains smoke flavoring. Be sure to get genuine smoked fish if you can. Many smoke flavorings are not good for your health.
Since smoked fish is often pretty salty, you don’t need to add salt to this salad. Well, at least taste the salad first before adding any salt — you might get surprised that there indeed is no need to add salt!
Commercial mayonnaise is often made with terrible vegetable seed oils that are a definite no-no on a clean keto diet. There is no reason to do dirty keto as it won’t be beneficial to your health, unlike clean keto that is the ultimate way to support your health and wellbeing. Making homemade mayonnaise pays off, and it’s easy as well. You’ll get a super easy and simple — and a fool-proof — recipe on my Low Sugar, So Simple book.
I often use light olive oil as a base for my keto mayonnaise, but feel free to use a combination of healthy fats and oils, like coconut oil, MCT oil, avocado oil, or macadamia oil. Just note that the two latter ones have quite a strong taste and are not that well-suited alone but with other mild-flavored oils.
That’s it, let’s take a look at how to prepare this easy yet rich and satisfying keto salad:
Take two hard-boiled organic eggs and place them in a shallow bowl.
Mash with a fork.
Like this.
Add 1/2 cup (120 ml) chopped smoked white-fleshed fish. This is local cold-smoked whitefish from Åland, where I’m preparing this recipe and shooting the photos and videos. The fish is of superior quality and tastes fantastic!
Add also 1/4 cup (60 ml) mayonnaise…
…2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill…
…and 1 tablespoon capers.
Here we go, all 5 ingredients together.
Mix…
…until well combined.
Enjoy!
How I came up with this easy keto salad recipe
This week, I have been traveling and thus needed to come up with an easy recipe that I can develop during my trip. I spent a few days in Åland (Finland) in a beautiful, old house in the countryside.
Actually, the house had a fully equipped kitchen and lots of nice plates, cutlery, and other fascinating stuff to use as photography props. It meant that I could basically develop almost any kind of recipe there!
However, on my idea list for easy keto recipes to develop, I had two recipes that I wanted to try out in Åland. This particular Egg and Smoked Fish Salad recipe is the first one, and the second one you’ll get as my next week’s post!
So, I had written down an idea for an easy keto salad featuring eggs and smoked fish tied together with rich mayonnaise. As Åland is an island (or actually Åland consists of thousands of islands), there is high-quality fish easily available. Boiled eggs are a staple on a keto diet and can be used in various ways. We Finns (including me) often make egg butter with just salted butter and mashed hard-boiled eggs (though I have made several variations on the traditional recipe). In addition, eggs are a perfect ingredient for satisfying salads and sandwich fillings.
But naturally, my salad needed something else than just eggs, smoked fish, and mayonnaise. I was thinking of herbs and quite soon realized dill would make a perfect companion to both eggs and fish.
However, I wasn’t still satisfied with those 4 ingredients. I definitely wanted to add a fifth, preferably a very flavorful ingredient.
Suddenly, I concluded that capers would be the ultimate super flavorful addition to my salad. They would lend a zippy, salty, and slightly tangy flavor to the salad and balance out the richness.
So, I was happy with my selection of the ingredients. Now, I needed to ponder the amounts and started making some calculations.
After some pondering, I took two boiled eggs, 1/2 cup (120 ml) chopped cold-smoked whitefish, 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill, and 1 tablespoon capers.
I mashed the eggs and added the rest of the ingredients. Well, the salad looked fine, but I was hoping for a creamier result. After adding another 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, the salad looked perfect. However, I thought there is a tad too little dill, so I added another tablespoon of chopped fresh dill.
Now, I was completely satisfied with my salad. It was unbelievably flavorful, with well-balanced flavors that made a fabulous harmony. The fish was lending delicious smoke flavor and all the needed salt, the capers were pleasant to bite — with also some saltiness. The eggs were mellow, and the mayonnaise was super rich and slightly tangy, tying the other ingredients awesomely together. Last but not least, dill was just the perfect herb for the salad. It provided fresh flavor, but it wasn’t overpowering. How wonderful!
I bet you will also fall in love with this easy, very tasty, and satisfying salad! Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:
5-Ingredient Egg and Smoked Fish Salad
Rich, satisfying, and tasty, this Egg and Smoked Fish Salad makes a great lunch, appetizer, or filling for your keto sandwiches and tortillas. With 5 simple ingredients, this easy-to-make dish is a surefire hit and your new favorite whenever you need easy recipes for your busy life — or just want to whip up a quick meal yet not compromise your healthy lifestyle.
Ingredients
- 2 hard-boiled organic eggs, peeled
- 1/2 cup = 120 ml chopped smoked white-fleshed fish
- 1/4 cup = 60 ml mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill
- 1 tablespoon capers
Instructions
- Place the eggs in a shallow bowl. Mash with a fork.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until well combined.
- Ready!
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Nutrition information | In total | Per serving if 2 servings in total |
Protein | 34.3 g | 17.2 g |
Fat | 64.1 g | 32.1 g |
Net carbs | 0.7 g | 0.4 g |
kcal | 710 kcal | 355 kcal |
Tips for variations
If you are not a big fan of capers, you can definitely leave them out. The salad is certainly flavorful even without them. On the other hand, if you like olives, you can replace the capers with 1/4 cup (60 ml) chopped black Kalamata olives. Or, instead of capers and olives — or in addition for more flavor — you can add a couple of tablespoons chopped onion or chives.
Instead of dill, feel free to experiment with other herbs. A good rule of thumb is that the more flavorful the herb, the less you need it. You certainly don’t want to end up with a salad in which some herb overpowers other flavors. For this salad, basil, thyme, oregano, or rosemary are good options. Add a tablespoon of chopped herb, mix, and taste. Add more if needed.
If you want to make this salad even more flavorful, add a tablespoon or two freshly grated Parmesan on top of each serving.
General prattling
So, this week I’ve spent time in beautiful Turku and Åland. I have my car with me, so it’s easy to go from one place to another by driving. I took a ferry to Åland and back.
In Åland, I was happy to find lots of different berries. These stone brambles you’ll find all over Finland, but I’ve never seen that many stone brambles at once as I saw in Åland!
Near the house I spent the few days were growing lots of wild raspberries. Actually, wild raspberries are my favorite berries, so I was happy to eat a good amount of them. With whipped cream and thick Greek yogurt, they taste divine!
And that’s not all the berries: I saw thousands and thousands of juniper berries! Most of them were raw like these ones here.
After coming back from Åland, I visited top chef Sami Tallberg and his film director wife, Lotta, in Turku. Sami had made a mind-blowingly delicious lunch featuring tender and flavorful osso bucco.
For the dessert, we enjoyed fresh Finnish bilberries with a sauce that contained cream, tonka beans, vanilla, and licorice powder. It was a very fascinating flavor combination and extremely delicious with bilberries. Sami is well-known for his flavor pairing skills, and he has written many books about the topic.
Thank you, Sami, for the tasty lunch in a very beautiful environment, the excellent company, and the enchanting discussions!
Roberta
Another good option for the fish here could be smoked trout: less fat than salmon, less salty than the majority of smoked white fish (salt is totally fine, but we already have capers or olives here so it could be a bit overpowering), a flavorful way to change something in a basic jet customizable salad to enjoy again and again! Also try to spyce it up adding a sprinkle of lemon zest and fresh grated ginger to clean the mouth from the fish taste with a fresher note and help digestion 😉
elviira
Thank you, Roberta, for the great ideas! I prefer to serve the salad with lemon wedges so those who want to have more zing can squeeze some lemon juice on top, but lemon zest in the salad sounds very fascinating!