Letter of Recommendation: Salmon Bones

My current food obsession is "salmon bones", which I got for next to nothing: $2.50 for 1kg. I cooked the entire bag yesterday, yielding approx. 6 meals (2 servings of bone-in fish, 2 servings of belly, and 2 servings of salmon stock).

These are the parts of the salmon left over from cutting out fillets, which are of course much more expensive at around $25 a kg, or 10 times as much! Although labelled "bones", these parts have plenty of meat left, and the bellies were an unexpected and delicious bonus. 

I salted and cooked the hunks of meat-and-bone in the air fryer until crisp. Eating them was a joy. Like chicken wings, bone-in salmon is a high-commitment affair, requiring the use of both hands. One to hold the salmon piece, the other to pull bones from your mouth. Your hands will be salmon-y the whole day. A bowl of water with lemon slices is nice to have (squeeze the lemon over the fish first, so there's no waste). 

Cook the belly after you do the bones, because your fryer will be flooded with liquefied salmon fat. Roasted salmon belly gets you close to the fillet experience - you can use cutlery - but it tastes even better.

You could throw the fat away or use it to cook something else, but i poured mine into the salmon stock pot together with the bones from our meal. It takes only 20 minutes of simmering to get the flavour from the roasted fish discards (which are second order discards, when you think about it) - more than 30 and your broth will get fishy. 

Since salmon broth takes no time to cook, I might just stash bones in the freezer and make the broth when I really feel like it.

I used my fishy stock as a noodle soup base last night, adding seaweed, greens, shabu shabu beef, and a beaten egg. Tonight I might make ochazuke with the last bit, heating it up to pour over rice, furikake, and flaked salmon. 

Too good! I can't believe I used to buy salmon fillets.