Viral Candied Salmon Dip | Super Bowl Dip | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with candied salmon dip. That's right, this incredible new party dip was inspired by the recent candied salmon craze. And whether you're rooting for that city in the great Northwest, known for its incredible salmon or not, this would be perfect for your game day spread. And to get started, let's meet the star of the show, which would be 8 ounces of hot smoked salmon. No, not cold smoked. That is the stuff we put on bagels and that's not really going to work here. And as you can see, this one's coated with some black pepper, which is very common, but pretty much any hot smoked salmon will work. And what we're going to want to do is break this up and peel it off the skin. And we'll simply crumble that into a bowl. And we can do that in pretty big pieces at this point since this is all going to get broken up when we mix in the rest of the ingredients. And this is supposed to be boneless. But sometimes they miss one or two. So pay attention while you do this. And fair warning, the hardest part about this step is not eating half the salmon while you do it. So maybe buy an extra piece, but please be careful. And then once that's been accomplished, we can move on to make the syrup that's going to turn our hot smoked salmon into simulated candied salmon. And that starts with some brown sugar to which we will add a little bit of maple syrup. And once those are in, believe it or not, we're going to add a tablespoon of ketchup, which is also going to add a little bit of sweetness, and it will also help give us that classic candied salmon color. And then we'll also add a couple tablespoons of vinegar before we spice this up with a generous squeeze of shrizza. Plus, last but not least, way more than a few shakes of cayenne. And yes, I'm making mine pretty spicy. And if you want to add less, feel free. I mean, you guys are after all the Seattle Seahawks of making sure this dip rocks. But in any event, we'll place that on the stove. And we'll turn on the heat and adjust that to about medium. And we'll wait for that to start to simmer. And once it does, we'll give it a good stir. And once everything's been combined and it's boiling like this, we will let that cook for a couple minutes or until it reduces down and thickens up. Right? Not super thick, but something that looks just about like this. And once we get to that point, we'll simply turn off the heat. And we'll let that sit and cool for a few minutes while we move on to make our dips base, which like so many other party dips starts with cream cheese, which of course is famously delicious with smoked salmon. As are the rest of these ingredients, including a whole bunch of freshly chopped dill, some drained and roughly chopped capers, as well as some finely and freshly sliced green onions. And then we'll finish up with one lemon's worth of freshly grated zest. And if you're sort of new to cooking, we use lemon zest when we want lemon flavor, but we don't want the extra liquid and acidity of the juice. And once we have that grated in, we'll grab a spatula and we'll give this a thorough mix, which really is fast and easy. If you remember to take your cheese out of the fridge and it's room temp, which I almost never do, but anyway, eventually I got that mixed. And once we do, we'll transfer everything into a shallow casserole dish. And we'll clean off our spatula with a spoon. And then we'll use that spoon to spread this out as evenly as we can. And ideally, we want to choose a baking dish where once we have our cream cheese in and we've topped it with our salmon, our ingredients are coming up pretty much to the top since that's going to give us the best looking final appearance. But anyway, once our dip base is done, we will grab our freshlymade syrup off the stove and dump it into our salmon. And we'll take a spoon and give that a thorough mixing. And as we do this, those chunks of salmon are being broken up into nice small pieces, which is exactly why we don't want to crumble it up too small when we break it up into the bowl. Otherwise, we might end up with something closer to a paste. And I don't want a candied salmon paste. And that's it. Once mixed, we can transfer that over the top. And we will spread that out as evenly as possible. And I said spread. I didn't say press and smash, so I want you to be a little bit gentle here. So, we'll mostly just be using the tip of the spoon. And once we have our salmon evenly distributed, we have to perform a very important maneuver before we put this in the oven. And that would be to place over a piece of plastic wrap. And we'll press that down very gently with our hands so that the surface is nice and smooth. All right. If we don't do that, all those little tiny pointy pieces of salmon are going to burn before the rest of the surface is caramelized, which is just not going to look or taste as good. And by the way, if you're making this ahead, just leave that plastic on and transfer this into the fridge until you're ready to party. But I am ready to party. So, we'll go ahead and place this under our broiler, which I have set on high, which is my oven's only setting. And for best results, I think we want that about seven or eight inches below the heat. And we'll keep a very close eye on that. And we'll let that broil until the top is nicely browned and beautifully caramelized. And I would have showed you more of these shots. But unfortunately, my broiler turns off if I open the oven. But anyway, like I said, we'll broil that for a few minutes or until the top is beautifully browned and it's almost starting to char in a few spots. And it hopefully looks like this. I know that is gorgeous. And that service is nice and shiny and sort of candyike. And then as far as service goes, I don't think this is a great hot dip. All right. I think it's much better at room temper cold. So I think we should let this sit a little bit before we serve it up. But once we are ready, I like to top this with some more sliced green onions, which is going to make the colors of that already gorgeous crust pop even more. And that's it. Our candied salmon dip is ready to enjoy, which I think we're going to want to do next to some kind of cracker. And for me, I think fin crisp are the best, which is a Finnish sourdough rye cracker that are pretty easy to find. And while this would be good on lots of different things, this, my friends, is a marriage made in heaven. And when I say this dip has it all, I mean that almost literally, right? This is sweet. It's spicy. It's savory. It's salty. It's smoky, of course. It's creamy. It's herbaceious. And if you are a fan of candied salmon, there is no way you're not going to absolutely love this. Oh, and as far as the ratio goes here, I went with one part salmon to two parts of our cream cheese mixture. But if you did want something a little meteor, you could do equal parts. And if you are wondering exactly how sweet this is, okay, it's probably less sweet than something like a candied bacon and maybe about the same as those cocktail meatballs that we toss in the grape jelly and the chili sauce. But if you make this nice and spicy like I did, I think we end up with something nicely balanced, not to mention extremely addictive. Oh, and if you're wondering why I'm serving this with two knives instead of just the one, well, go ahead and put this out at your next party and you'll have your answer after they take the first bite. People are not going to want to wait to dig back into this. But no matter how many knives you use or whether you're rooting for the team from the Pacific Northwest or for that team back east who prefer their balls slightly deflated, I think this is an incredibly delicious, interesting, and unique party dip. And I really do hope you give it a try. soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. and is always enjoy. Boy.