Welcome to our collection of recipes, lore, and favorite stories from all of us at the Smokehaus. We hope you find something interesting and useful to add to your food journey.
One of our simplest offerings is also our most impressive. The Northern Bagel is a showcase of our "traditional" smoked Atlantic salmon. Our Haus-made scallion cream cheese is the perfect counterpoint for the sweet and slightly salty salmon, and the toasted bagel is a perfect delivery device. Our second best seller after the untouchable Cajun Finn. This is possibly the best way to experience our smoked salmon.
Traditional smoked salmon from the deli.
This savory cheesecake is perfect when sliced relatively thin as an appetizer, but also works well for lunch or even as an entrée. Fans of our Northern Bagel will be familiar with its creamy, lightly salmony flavors.
Crust:
4 Tbsp melted butter
1 large egg white
1 ½ cups crushed bagel chips
Filling:
24oz cream cheese (bring to room temperature before mixing)
4oz sour cream
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp salt
2 large eggs
10oz (.625lbs) smoked fish, de-boned and flaked (we suggest 8oz smoked lake trout and 2oz smoked sockeye salmon [for color], but any combination will do)
⅓ cup finely chopped chives
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In a small bowl, combine melted butter, bagel chips, and egg white. Press the mixture into the bottom of a 10-inch spring-form pan. Bake for 8 minutes. Remove from the oven to cool, and adjust the oven to 250°F.
3. In a mixing bowl fitted with a paddle attachment, blend the cheese, sour cream, cornstarch, and salt until combined. Mix in the eggs. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the smoked fish and chives. Pour mixture into the cooled crust.
4. Bake at 250°F for 1 hour, then turn off the oven and let sit in the oven (don’t open the door during this process) for an additional hour. Cool on a rack for at least 4 hours. Carefully un-mold (you may want to run a knife around the edge first) and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Tip: The flavor of the smoked salmon is more apparent as the cheesecake warms up after refrigeration, so you may wish to allow your slices to warm up a little before serving.
All of February, we're running a 10%-off mail order sale on all Smoked Traditional Atlantic Salmon products, including A Hygge Box.
Instead of regaling the release of four new sandwiches, and the return of two sandwiches, or blathering about the ongoing emptying of our office, we'll let this week be a self-guided tour. Follow the links to explore the world of Smoked Traditional Atlantic Salmon—an item that consistently hangs at the top of our bestsellers list.
A beautiful fillet of salmon smoked the traditional way with salt, brown sugar, and our special wood blend. We use only the highest quality boneless Atlantic salmon. Each fillet is hand-trimmed, brined, smoked, and packaged without the use of artificial colors or preservatives. *Your Traditional Fillet may take extra time to ship (up to one extra week), depending on availability.
1 whole fillet
2-2.25 pounds average
Serves 15-20
Our Traditional Smoked Salmon Tails have always been a shop favorite. They’re popular amongst the snack enthusiasts and a great meal for those with smaller appetites. Our traditional smoked salmon tails are brined with brown sugar and salt and smoked until perfection for 6-7 hours.
Half pound of salmon tails, vacuum sealed
Let us transport your taste buds to the Zenith City where you first met this perfect match of Smoked Salmon and green-onion cream cheese. Our Northern Bagel Sandwich. Now you can experience the magic of sitting in the Canal Park deli in your own home, with your favorite person, or a group of friends or family. The Northern Bagel sandwich kit will be shipped to your doorstep along with wafting memories of your last trip to Duluth.
Would you like our dill, black pepper & coriander, or cajun salmon instead of traditional? Just let us know in the order notes and we’ll happily swap it for you.
Each Northern Bagel Sandwich Kit includes:
1/2 pound of Traditional Smoked Salmon
Two bagels from St. Paul Bagelry
One 8 oz. tub of Hausmade Scallion Cream Cheese
Two chocolate chip cookies from Positively 3rd Street Bakery
Assembly and toasting instructions (Need an extra copy? Download them here.)
NWS Tote Bag
We have Northern Bagel Sandwich Kits for two, four and eight! Please multiply food quantities above by two and four respectively for the larger sandwich kits. Each kit will have plenty of Traditional Smoked Atlantic Salmon and green-onion cream cheese for leftovers.
It’s high time we offer you a smoked salmon box for the purists out there. Introducing The Perfectionist: 4 pieces of Smoked Traditional Atlantic Salmon. Sweet and simple. Much like the woman in Grant Wood’s painting, our traditional salmon is a beauty all on its own, no extra spice needed. Our signature smoked Atlantic salmon is a perfect marriage of salt, sugar, and smoke. We use only the highest-quality, boneless Atlantic salmon. We hand-trim, brine, then smoke each fillet with our special wood blend, then package it without the use of artificial colors or preservatives. This gift of four beautiful pieces individually packaged is the perfect gift for smoked salmon purists everywhere.
4 pieces Smoked Traditional Atlantic Salmon (about 2 pounds)
In other news: Yesterday, your friendly neighborhood blogger had his first bite of The Pack Lunch—the premier sandwich of our upcoming collaborative relationship with our own friendly neighbors at Duluth Pack—and it is really good! Haus rye, with horseradish mayo, a quarter-pound of Corned Bison, cornichon pickles, red onion, maple syrup, and lettuce comprise this perfect trailside sandwich, which will be launched alongside an awesome new Duluth Pack-designed Smokehaus tote bag. Expect a launch date sometime shortly after the ides of March.
In similar fashion, an as-of-yet unnamed smoked fish sandwich will be arriving around the same time. A lovely supporter of the Boundary Waters won the naming rights in the Friends of the Boundary Waters auction last year. We can't wait to see what sort of name they come up with!
Sandwich Lab Specials are back! Rather than running monthlong specials like last year, we're going to bring all the new sandwiches to you at the same time, and keep them around for a while longer. Each one of our sandwiches eventually develops some degree of cult-following, and we want to give these staff-favorite newbies the same opportunity.
Today, we'll be talking about two sandwiches that share something in common with each other, and with our most successful sandwich model: fish sandwiches. This is the first installment in a series of blogs about the eight sandwiches set to grace our menu before summer,including six new sandwiches—four from the most recent Sandwich Lab, and two collaborations—and two returning favorites from last year's Sandwich Lab.
Alþings Considered is based on the open-faced sandwiches Andrew beheld at his bestemor's 90th birthday in Stavagner, Norway: rye bread, brushed with cream cheese and topped with gravlax, capers, lemon slices, fresh dill, and other fixings.
After Andrew joined the Smokehaus team, he began trying to recapture the majesty of de smørbrødene, finding the necessary ingredients readily available on our sandwich line and in the prep kitchen.
Andrew's take on this sandwich begins with two slices of our haus-baked Prince Myshkin rye bread, a few generous swipes of scallion cream cheese, capers, Atlantic salmon gravlax, tomato slices, hausmade quick pickles, and a hausmade Nordic slaw developed just for this sandwich, featuring thinly-sliced cabbage, radish, and lemon, dressed with vinegar and dill.
At the very least, this smørbrød is a reminder that gravlax is amazing. At best, well, you'll just have to try it for yourself and find out.
And what about that name? How are you meant to pronounce that non-Roman character? I'll spare you the cursory linguistic and historical lessons, and skip ahead to the answer—it's a voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative consonant. If that's not helpful, think of NPR. If that's still not helpful, there are some clues in this paragraph for you to follow in pursuit of the origin of this name.
Alþings Considered joins our menu on Monday, February 3rd, alongside the Catbus, the Sorta-Torta, and the Salmon Melt.
TK, our beloved inventory expert and wine connoisseur, sought to fill an obvious gap on our menu.
In TK's words, "The tuna melt is one of the best deli sandwiches ever." While we've never been a tuna joint, we have something that compares quite favorably to the average tuna salad: Smoked Salmon Pâté.
TK's Salmon Melt is a essentially a classic tuna melt, with a hearty portion of our Smoked Salmon Pâté substituted for the tuna salad: Two slices of buttered haus-baked Pullman white bread, toasted alongside cheddar cheese-topped salmon pâté, assembled with a chunky dill pickle/red onion/celery relish.
The Salmon Melt gives our Smoked Salmon Pâté—which itself features the bright and exciting blend of such flavors as lemon juice, horseradish, Cajun seasoning, dill, scallions, and parsley—another context in which to shine, and in unexpected circumstances: served hot.
The Salmon Melt joins our menu on Monday, February 3rd, alongside the Catbus, the Sorta-Torta, and the aforementioned Alᚦings Considered.
Thanks for tuning in to this latest series of product features. Scandinavian fans, please forgive my sloppy attempts at Norwegian linguistic and cultural analysis: I took one semester of Norwegian at St. Olaf College, and my best friend moved to Norway a decade ago—we're just pretending that makes me qualified.
For more information about Sandwich Lab, please read the copy-pasted details below:
IN THE DELICATESSEN SCENE, NEVER SHAKING UP YOUR SANDWICH MENU IS CONSIDERED ESPECIALLY HEINOUS. AT NORTHERN WATERS SMOKEHAUS, THE DEDICATED DELI EMPLOYEES WHO INNOVATE ON THE SANDWICH MENU ARE MEMBERS OF AN ELITE SQUAD KNOWN AS THE SANDWICH LAB. THESE ARE THEIR STORIES:
AT NORTHERN WATERS SMOKEHAUS, OUR WORK IS PLAYING WITH FOOD. THAT MEANS SOMETIMES, IN THE LINE OF DUTY, WE STUMBLE UPON AN AMAZING COMBINATION OF INGREDIENTS THAT EVOLVES OVER SEVERAL SHIFT-MEALS INTO A NOTEWORTHY NEW SANDWICH. OTHER TIMES WE UNCOVER A MORE EFFICIENT WAY TO BUILD A SANDWICH, OR WE SWAP AN INGREDIENT ON A CURRENT MENU ITEM. SANDWICH LAB IS AN ANNUAL GATHERING OF OUR STAFF TO REFINE OUR SANDWICH-LINE SKILLS, TO COME TO AGREEMENT ON ANY CONTROVERSIES, AND—THE BEST PART—TO INTRODUCE OUR PET SANDWICHES TO THE GREATER SMOKEHAUS COMMUNITY.
NOTABLE SANDWICH LAB FINDINGS FROM PREVIOUS YEARS INCLUDE THE CEDARS’S SECRET, THE PURPLE RANGE, AND THE PORK LION. LAST YEAR’S SANDWICH LAB HAD SO MANY GOOD SANDWICHES THAT WE COULDN’T DECIDE ON JUST ONE OR TWO TO ADD TO THE MENU, SO WE DECIDED TO GIVE THEM ALL A CHANCE TO SHINE, AS MONTH-LONG SPECIALS.
Our signature Smoked Atlantic Salmon is a perfect marriage of salt, sugar, and smoke. It’s hard to beat this old standby. We use only the highest quality boneless Atlantic salmon. We hand-trim, brine, then smoke each fillet with our special wood blend, then package it without the use of artificial colors or preservatives. To read more about our Atlantic salmon, hop on over to our blog. This mouth-watering salmon is also used in our Northern Bagel Sandwich Kits. A sandwich on our deli menu since 2001.
1 piece, about 1/2 pound