Flaked Fish Opens Up a World of Culinary Possibilities

I appreciate the ceremony and presentation of a perfectly cooked portion of fish, served up on a platter. It’s a classic culinary composition, a platonic ideal of protein paired with a couple of sides. But if I'm being honest, some of my favorite meals are built around imperfectly flaked fish.

When fish is flaked, it cedes its presence as the centerpiece and starts becoming part of the fabric of a meal. It stretches. It mingles. It invites improvisation. And that last point is perhaps why I love it so much. It feels less like plating and more like cooking — the kind of cooking where you’re standing at the counter, tasting as you go, letting instinct lead. 

I can draw a parallel between my enthusiasm for flaked fish and the moment I truly began to connect with wild-caught Alaskan seafood as an easy, all-purpose, everyday protein. It was a culinary breakthrough sparked by a flake-through, revealing to me the versatility of wild salmon and white fish as not just a lean protein to pair with sides, but a protein that contained multitudes, one that could be mixed and matched in so many yet-to-be discovered ways.

One of my earliest a-ha moments was when I first was living in Alaska with my husband Arron (WAC founder + CEO). I was peering into a freezer full of Alaskan fish but craving the flavors and textures of my childhood, my palate shaped by my Colombian roots and the experiences I had growing up in Miami, where I shared vibrant meals with my family that were an intermingling of ingredients and cuisines. Now, on the opposite end of the North American continent, I wasn’t exactly homesick, but I was searching for a feeling that felt like home. So I wondered, “Could salmon arepas be a thing?” 

I flaked up a fillet of cooked sockeye, folded it into masa, and pressed my handmade salmon arepas onto a hot griddle, the sweet, nostalgic perfume of the ground corn flour intermingling with the newly familiar scent of wild salmon. Suddenly, dinner became a portal not just to my past but a portal to the lifetime of culinary exploration and experimentation that lay ahead of me. Needless to say, “pink arepas” are now a standard in our recipe rotation — as are arepas simply topped with whichever species of wild-caught seafood I happen to have on hand.

Whether you’re in search of your own culinary breakthrough or are simply trying to figure out the best way to repurpose yesterday’s leftovers, here are a few dishes where I’ve found flaked fish to serve great culinary purpose:

• Folded into a family-style meal of salmon fried rice with garlicky cucumbers. 
• Stirred into a simmering pot of coconut milk stew, to warm through just before serving.
• Reshaped into crispy fish cakes, which you can enjoy as part of an elevated eggs Benedict — or however else you like.
• Layered into a cooked salmon sushi bake for a meal that invites active participation.
• Scooped onto toasted bread and topped with cheese for a feel-good salmon melt.

Once it’s flaked, the possibilities multiply — well beyond, perhaps, what you thought you knew about cooking fish.

Live Wild,

Monica

Pictured above: A serving dish of salmon fried rice — featuring flaked salmon — flecked with color and flavor. Make this recipe your own by substituting any type of flaked fish that you have on hand.