Here is my sardine or mackerel salad recipe that I make virtually every week with Vital Choice canned seafood. Why?! It is an excellent Source of Vitamin D which most of us are in need of at this time of year … and I think quite delicious!
The following are not exact measurements and can be changed according to your taste:
In a glass bowl, I mix …
- 1 can of Vital Choice wild-caught boneless Sardines or my preference is Sardines with bones. I also use Mackerel in olive oil – with the skin.
- About 1/2 to 1 whole organic celery stalk – minced
- About 1/2 medium or 1 small organic red pepper – minced
- 1 stalk of organic green onion – minced (optional for those who prefer to skip onion)
- 1 to 2 Tablespoons of organic fennel – minced
- Sometimes, I add 1 or 2 Tablespoons of minced Italian parsley to the mix
- I have also added 1 or 2 Tablespoons minced endive to the mix …
- and squeezed lemon as well!
- I always add a generous pinch or two of Celtic sea salt and freshly ground pepper
- I eat this scooped into a half an avocado or with avocado slices, or I mash the avocado and mix it into the bowl … and/or topped on a plate of organic lettuce, perhaps with endive and radicchio and/or arugula mixed in.
When I eat the sardine or mackerel salad topped on a bed of lettuce, I use this homemade salad dressing from Max Shkud for the lettuce:
The amounts of each item can be varied according to your taste.
1/4 cup of extra virgin, cold pressed, olive oil
1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar (optional)
1 Tablespoon of dijon mustard
2 Tablespoons of plain whole yogurt – add more if you’d like it more creamy and less spicy (I add more)
1/2 clove of garlic crushed
1 Tablespoon of fresh squeezed orange juice (optional)
1 teaspoon of maple syrup or honey (or more as per taste and whether or not you are using orange juice)
This recipe was also published by Vital Choice. For questions about what is in the lining of their cans please see this article, as well as this one on the Vital Choice website.
Nourishing Ourselves 
9 Responses to Sardine or Mackerel Salad
I have it and it’s (in Sandrine’s words) delis!
oops!!!!!!! I’ve had this wonderful salad and it’s delish!!!!! is what I meant to say.
Thank you, Layne! It really is delish … eh?!
I am glad to hear a company is canning without BPA. I would like to know when the rest of the country is going to get on board. It seems like I hear enough about BPA in canned food that everybody, including food processing companies should know about it by now. I was amazed how fast different food producers started to trend away from trans fats (not all and not totally, but it was impressive) and am confounded that not more companies are getting on board with giving us BPA-free choices in canned foods. Is it THAT expensive to can food without it?
[…] Nourishing Our Children recommends Vital Choice’s sardines and mackerel and offers this recipe. Nourished Kitchen teaches how to render […]
I love vital choice as well. I just wonder what all the BPA-free containers are replacing the BPA with…
From Randy Hartnell, owner of Vital Choice.
Vital Choice has been aware of the BPA issue for many years and began seeking BPA free packaging more than five years ago. We are well aware of the argument that some BPA replacements may carry their own risks. We have spent thousands of dollars on testing, including one that analyzed our salmon cans and found them free of ANY endocrine disrupting compounds.
Realize that Vital Choice families eat more of our products than just about anyone so unlike big food corporations we have a highly personal vested interest in this issue.
Over the years the specter of contaminants in seafood has comes up often – every time a related story makes the evening news or the various forums of Oprah, Dr. Oz, Dr. Mercola, Dr. Hyman, Dr. Sinatra etc.
After years of this I’ve come to the following conclusion: in general, we are all still walking around with a “stone age” brain that make us hypersensitive to potential threats and relatively oblivious to good news and intangible rewards like “health benefits.”
How else can one explain the widespread tendency for people to ignore or discount literally thousands of studies showing dramatic–even astonishing – benefits from eating food like wild salmon (in almost any form) while focusing intently on a handful of often dubious studies suggesting a hypothetical risk? Methylmercury is a great example: There are virtually no peer-reviewed studies showing toxicity from eating commercially available seafood–a fact that underlies the recent EPA & FDA announcement advising pregnant and nursing moms to eat more of it. On the contrary, if you look around the world, populations who consume the most seafood tend to be the healthiest and longest-lived. Yet millions of people in this country avoid seafood for fear of mercury toxicity, a threat for which there is absolutely no evidence.
It’s no surprise to any of us that the media and savvy marketers understand and thrive upon manipulating our primal “negativity bias,” so sensational headlines are commonplace – “if it bleeds it leads,” is the classic editorial mantra. Headlines threatening toxic mercury, BPA, radiation, and empty oceans sell newspapers, drive clicks and compel human behavior like nothing else, but in the end that behavior often serves their needs and is rarely in the best interests of consumers.
So in summary, science repeatedly finds that consuming utterly traditional foods like wild salmon can dramatically lower risk of heart disease (which kills about 700,000 of us each year), as well as improve ones odds of avoiding just about every disease none of us wants to get, yet millions avoid it for fear of consuming vanishingly small substances that MAY carry some vanishingly small risk. The bottom line is that nothing we consume is absolutely free of contaminants, so it really comes down to a NET BENEFIT assessment. For what it’s worth I try to eat some seafood every day.
That’s my two cents worth anyway.
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