Salmon Flakes

Welcome to What’s Cooking Wednesday, hosted by Tales from the Fairy Blogmother. Today’s recipe, Salmon Flakes (or Furikake), is from a website I have been fascinated with for the longest time: Just Bento, which is all about bento boxes and yummy foods to fill them. Just Bento’s sister site, Just Hungry, is a fantastic resource on Japanese cooking, especially for someone living outside of Japan with not as much access to Japanese ingredients. The author of both sites, Maki, is a Japanese woman who has lived outside of Japan for large parts of her life. Currently she is relocating from Switzerland to France in fact. She is a wealth of information, and I have learned so much from reading both sites.

Salmon flakes intrigued me because it’s a rice topping that is always fairly expensive at Japanese grocery stores – finding out I could make it at home was very exciting, especially since I can find wild salmon for a reasonable price at Costco and Trader Joe’s. I have included below Maki’s recipe:

Salmon (sake) flakes or furikake, adapted from Just Bento
Makes about a cup.

• 1 raw salmon filet with skin on, about 150g / 4 1/2 oz
• Salt
• 1/4 cup and 1 tsp rice wine vinegar, separated
• 2 tsp. tamari

Salt both sides of the salmon filet well, and leave in the refrigerator for at least an hour, preferably overnight. This not only salts the fish but draws out some moisture as well.
Wipe off any excess moisture from the fish. Put skin side down in a dry non-stick frying pan. Add rice vinegar. Put on a lid and let cook over medium heat until the fish is completely steam-cooked and the sake has evaporated.
Take the fish out of the pan, let cool and take off the skin. Flake the fish finely with a fork and your hands. While you work, remove any fine bones.
Wipe out the frying pan and put the fish flakes back in the pan. Add another tamari and another teaspoon of vinegar. Stir around to evaporate the moisture. At this point you can leave the flakes fairly moist, or continue stirring until they are quite dry and finely flaked. The more you dry it out, the longer it will keep. Just do not let it burn or color too much.
Let the flakes cool competely. Store in the refrigerator for about 1 week or so.
Just Bento shows the furikake on top of some rice in a bento – I eat the salmon flakes that way, or also sometimes roll up some salmon flakes in seaweed with brown rice. I tried to take a picture of the handrolls, but they weren’t so fabulous in photographs, so intead, here is a picture of the flakes.