Product Feature: Spreads and Dips

Last week, we took a look at the cheese population of our Grab & Go case. In doing so, we dipped our toes into another segment of the case: Hausmade spreads and dips.

Scallion Cream Cheese

A simple combination that yields a great flavor. This cream cheese dazzles tastebuds with just enough green onion flavor, and is the glue that holds together a grip of our deli sandwiches—the Northern Bagel, the Great Summer Caper, the Fuzzy Bunny (vegetarian), the Basic Bagel (also vegetarian!), the Sebu-Chan, and of course, the Cajun Finn. The Fish Basket pairs your selection of smoked fish with crackers and scallion cream cheese.

A favorite move among our staff is using scallion cream cheese as a kettle chip dip. Preferred flavor: Salt & Vinegar.

Scallion cream cheese is available upon request in our deli, and via pickup/delivery, for $2.25 per 4 oz container, $4.50 per 8 oz, and $9 per 16 oz.

Crayo

crayo sandwich

Crayo is so good it should be illegal.

The incomparable sauce that serves as the foundation for the Cold Turkey, Cedar's Secret, and Purple Range sandwiches is undeniably one of the greatest components on our sandwich line.

Blended with healthy doses of garlic, walnuts, and dehydrated cranberries, this mayo is a flavor explosion. Honestly, the slurry those three ingredients produce would probably make a great sandwich spread on its own, but the inclusion of mayo smoothes it out and takes it to the next level.

Like most of the things on this list, Crayo excels as a condiment and a dip. Any time you want a combination of sweet and savory, Crayo will likely scratch that itch.

Crayo is available upon request in our deli, and via pickup/delivery, for $3 per 4 oz container, $6 per 8 oz, and $12 per 16 oz.

Olivada

Olivada—Kalamata olives, garlic, olive oil, red pepper flakes, and thyme—is a spread that might even turn the most olive-averse. I would know, because that is me, and I quite enjoy this spread. Garlic is magical.

Olivada doesn't show up on any of our sandwiches—except for the short-lived Grab & Go Muffaletta (RIP)—but it's a favorite "secret" ingredient on our catering charcuterie spreads, and when making sample platters during lunch rushes.

Enjoying olivada is as simple as finding something to spread it on: crackers, toast, that chicken you're about to roast. Some might even enjoy it by the spoonful. Olivada compliments bright flavors like goat cheese or pepperoncinis.

Most days, you'll find NWS Olivada in the Grab & Go case, for $5 per 8 oz container.

Scallion Spud Spread

Whether you're placing it atop the potato, dipping the (fried) potato into it, or mashing the potato with it, our spin on the "Legendary" Midwestern dip has you(r potato) covered. Made with cream cheese, plain yogurt (rather than the traditional sour cream), scallions, garlic powder, and onion powder, and costing scarcely more than a bag of kettle chips, this deal is too good to pass up.

Our spud spread is available in our deli, or via pickup/delivery, for $1.50 per 6 oz container.

Smoked Salmon Pâté

Our Smoked Salmon Pâté is one of the most frequently re-stocked items in our deli. It's spreadable, but not too smooth, it features a unique blend of spices and seasonings that might sound like the work of a mad scientist—it is: his name is Eric Goerdt—if we revealed it, and the flavor is tied together with the brightness of lemon juice and horseradish.

Miraculously, this highly-sought after spread is also a way we save on potential food waste, with a significant portion of the smoked salmon in each batch coming from the Atlantic salmon chunks that won't retail well—those that are too moist to stay on the skin or hold their shape—and the leftovers when prepping smoked salmon portions for the sandwich line.

Smoked Salmon Pâté can hold its own on a cracker of your choice, but limiting yourself to just crackers would be foolish. A common pick-me-up snack for our deli staff is a slice of cucumber with a dollop of pâté, a slice of pickled ginger, and a cilantro sprig garnish. On our web store, we recommend making an omelette with S.S.P., which I have not personally tested, though if we're advertising it on our website, I imagine it's good. Try it out and get back to me.

In addition to making great snack fodder, S.S.P. is the main event on our Slammin' Gordon and Salmon Melt sandwiches.

If there's not Smoked Salmon Pâté in our Grab & Go case, something is likely wrong. It'll be back in-stock ASAP. We sell it in 8 oz containers for $13, in our deli, or via pickup/delivery.

Pimiento Cheese

This rich and mildly-spicy cheddar cheese, peppers, and mayonnaise spread makes a mean ham & cheese sandwich, or an excellent dip. Set this out at your family gathering or game day celebration and watch it quickly disappear.

To ensure maximum flavor, we make our Pimiento with the finest aged cheddar cheese and Duke's mayonnaise.

Most days, Pimiento is available in our deli, or via pickup/delivery It comes in 8 oz containers for $7.

NWS Boursin Cheese

Cream cheese, butter, garlic, lemon zest, and fresh handpicked herbs. This smooth and creamy cheese spread might be tempting to eat by the spoonful, though we recommend it alongside crackers and smoked salmon (or juicy, medium-rare steak medallions). This hausmade cheese is a staple of our catering offerings and the sample platters we put out during business hours. In addition to having a great herbal quality, it is also wonderfully sweet.

If you've exhausted all other ideas for using our NWS Boursin (or even if you haven't), you could always honor the great state of Minnesota by making a fancy Juicy Lucy burger, substituting around a half-ounce of NWS Boursin for the American cheese product slice.

NWS Boursin is available for $7 per 8 oz container.

We hope this gives you a better picture of our Grab & Go case offerings. There's a whole lot of daily variety, and new items hitting the shelves whenever the whim strikes us, but most of the products listed above can be expected on an average day.

If you find yourself in our deli and want to be even more intimately acquainted with these products, ask for a sample—we can usually oblige, and your own senses are the best judge of whether you like something.

5 Ways We Save On Waste

Improving sustainability and reducing food waste should be a goal of any restaurant (or deli), and with the proper planning and creative thinking, isn’t terribly difficult to accomplish.

In your home kitchen, you’ve surely found that certain undesirable or inedible parts of food—carcasses, stems, papery vegetable skins, et cetera—make some of the best broths and stocks, and the burnt bits clinging to the pan are the basis of the most flavorful sauces. And of course organic material properly handled eventually yields nutrient-rich soil. One can extrapolate this philosophy to many areas of food production and life in general.

We need to move away from the idea that the unaesthetic, or not immediately necessary, parts of food are bad, or “waste,” or in some capacity destined for the trash. Today, let’s look at the ways we at NWS make the most of our food production. We’re not a perfect example of sustainability and optimization in food production, but we’re always looking for ways to innovate and improve.

Crostini/Croutons.

Bread—it’s gotta be fresh, right? For a sandwich, we wholeheartedly agree with you. That’s why we methodically cycle through frozen loaves of our haus-baked Pullman rye and white bread loaves, and bake off hero rolls and haus-baked ciabattas steadily throughout the day.

But sometimes there’s a slow few days, or too many heroes and ciabattas for a slow evening. Sometimes the closers like to bring a few rolls home, but relying on that just isn’t sufficient.

The solution was simple—throw them into freezer-ready bags, and let them dry out in the deep freeze. The moisture-sapped bread, though somewhat tedious to cut through, is primed for making crostini and croutons. 

Cut them to the appropriate size and shape, spread them out in a single layer on a sheet pan, dress them with olive oil, garlic powder, coarse salt, and dry thyme. Bake at 350°F for 10-15 minutes (know thine oven!) rotating the pan once at the halfway mark. Guess what: You’ve got crostini (or croutons!)

Smoked Salmon Pâté.

We could make our smoked salmon pâté exclusively with whole pieces of smoked salmon. That would be fine—in fact, it would be good. It would also mean we’d need to order and process twice as much fish.

Somewhere along the line we found an elegant solution to this problem. We prep Cajun, Traditional, and Black Pepper & Coriander smoked salmon daily for our sandwich line. Only the finest slices of that smoked salmon end up in sandwich portions.

(An adjacent category is the salmon that, during the kippering process, just becomes overwhelmingly moist and practically falls off the skin. This salmon is great for eating, but doesn’t look as nice as a gift, or on a platter, or as we’re placing it on the scale to weigh it.)

This is more for ease of use on our end of things than it is for the customers receiving the sandwiches. It all tastes roughly the same, and some would even argue that the seasoned belly-fat scraps taste a little bit better. 

That’s why they end up in the pâté. The “scraps” of “waste” from prep are oily and have a steeper ratio of seasoning to meat, and most importantly, they’re not going in the garbage. Additionally, we have the flexibility of making smoked salmon pâté on a daily basis (if need be) without needing to take salmon out of our fish case.

By the way, our debut cookbook, which is currently in development, will feature a recipe for making NWS Smoked Salmon Pâté from a single chunk of Traditional Smoked Atlantic Salmon, so you can take matters into your own hands!

Snack Stick Ends.

The main problem with selling our non-fish snack sticks (Bison Buddies, Big Jims, and Royales With Cheese) by unit price ($3/per, $2/per, and $2/per respectively) is the need to make those units a consistent side. This means we cut about 1/2” off of each stick. These ends get vacuum sealed and tossed in the deep freeze. To combat this mountain of cured meat nubs, we’ve implemented a handful of plans. 

1.) When we have cheese curds, we package cheese curds and meat nubs and sell them out of the Grab & Go case. 

2.) Sometimes we just package meat nubs with each other and sell them out of the Grab & Go case. 

3.) Frequently, Patricia will have an awesome pasty idea that utilizes some of the meat nubs, and I bet you can guess where we sell them.

4.) And, of course, they make great fodder for sample platters in the deli. 

Dip Sauce.

The zesty three-pepper sauce we serve alongside our Big Dipper sandwich is not only delicious—it is also very clever. Preservative liquids may not make the tastiest beverages, but they’re basically water, salt (sometimes sugar), vinegar, and seasonings, so they can easily be repurposed. 

Our Royale With Cheese snack sticks include pickle juice in the recipe to emulate the pickle slices on a bacon-cheeseburger. The dip sauce contains a sacred/secret ratio of the following—liquid from the roasted red pepper can, liquid from the pepperoncini (pickled sweet yellow peppers) tub, and a healthy dose of sriracha.

Sure, it’s easy enough to just dump such things down the drain, but next time you’re thinking about dumping your kimchi juice, or pickle juice, or what have you, down the drain—think again. There’s seasoning potential with which to experiment.

Fish Skin Dog Treats.

The skin of your smoked fish is not garbage. We used to compost them, but recently we’ve had a change of heart. Pets love fish skins—certain mushers in the area have even come to us asking for fish skins to feed their sled dogs.

However, keeping those skins around in our cooler is poor management of space. Again, the solution is simple: Bake them. You can do this quite easily with your own leftover fish skins.

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Scrape the excess fat and meat off of the fish skins and place them on a baking sheet in a single layer, scale side up. Bake them for 10 minutes, rotating the pan at the halfway point.

After they cool, you’ve got some shelf-stable snacks for your pets. They break into smaller, bite-sized pieces easily, and animals love them.

If your animals have plenty of treats, or if you’re living in an animal-free zone and still want to make the most of your fish skins, just salt them (with coarse sea salt) right out of the oven, while they’re still hot. Now, instead of animal treats, you’ve got a nice little salty snack, or salad topping, or whatever you might want to do with a crispy, salty fish skin.

How do you save on waste in your kitchen? We'd love to know. Leave some love in the comments.

5 Things: February 14th, 2020

Welcome back to 5 Things™! We have so much to tell you about.

Everyone is sick, injured, or on vacation.

Business slows down in the post-holiday winter season. This makes it an excellent time for our staff to plan vacations, and most who do have no trouble getting that time-off approved.

But what happens during all those overlapping vacations when the remaining folks start dropping due to midwinter illness and injuries?

This is the photo I use when I'm not sure what kind of photo I should use.

Apparently, we handle it just fine. The 3rd-floor office-dwellers swoop in to run deliveries. The delivery and deli staff chip in to make sure prep is complete on time. The sandwich makers flip that switch that turns them from sandwich-making humans into sandwich-making machines.

This is a public shoutout to our staff, who rock even in the most barebones arrangements!

Turkey jerky is now available.

We're at the height of our experimentation phase, and I'm loving it. The latest in our line of jerky is made with Ferndale Farms turkey, seasoned with Tamari soy sauce, maple syrup, and Sambal Oelek. It's simple in execution, but has great complexity in its flavor.

It's just a little bit sweet at first, with a growing heat that gently lights up your whole mouth, and while that is setting, the smoky flavor and the inimitable taste of turkey set in—it's a comparable experience to the pleasure of eating the Cedar's Secret sandwich. It's just tough enough to trigger your carnivorous tearing and gnawing instincts, but easily chewed.

But as much as I have to say about it, you're just going to have to find out for yourself.

The smoked Ferndale Farms turkey jerky is available for $16/half-pound in our deli. Why price it by the half-pound? Because a half-pound goes a long way!

Smoked salmon jerky is a success!

People are loving our sockeye jerky. Even during this slower time of the year, the batches we make are selling out at a steady pace, and we've received glowing reviews from the folks who have sampled and/or purchased it. Do yourself a favor and—at the very least—ask us for a sample next time you're in. We're steadily upgrading our jerky production equipment as we go, so it now comes in larger, more even strips, but here's some eye candy of the early sockeye jerky.

Our sockeye jerky is seasoned with fresh ginger, fresh garlic, lemon juice, Tamari soy sauce, Sambal Oelek chili paste and Shio Koji. Yum.

Smoked sockeye jerky is available in our deli for $20/half pound.

NWS smoked fish coming to Coastal Seafoods!

Twin Cities and Metro Area folks, this news is directed right at you: Coastal Seafoods, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, will be carrying a selection of our Smoked Atlantic Salmon—Traditional, Dill, Black Pepper & Coriander, and All-Season Fillets!

Our excitement over this is two-fold: First, we're happy to extend our influence to the Twin Cities, and second, we're really into what Coastal Seafoods is doing.

There's probably a few more folds and facets to our excitement—including the Minneapolis location's proximity to United Noodles, another of our favorite food markets—but let's not go overboard.

If you're reading this blog on the day it was published, definitely call either location to check on availability, but it should be in stock as of this weekend.

Lola, the hibiscus, is thriving!

Lola—who was only recently named—joined the cast of DeWitt-Seitz marketplace characters in Summer 2018, flowering beautifully on our patio seating area. After that, however, all bets were off: Duluth's climate is not ideal for hibiscus, hardy as they are.

We all rooted for Lola as she continued to struggle through the following year-and-some-change, but it wasn't until Flo began rigorous, regimented care of our dear hibiscus—naming her in the process—that she truly began to thrive.

Now Lola is spritzed with water three times a week, and has a prime sunlight location in our office, which will only improve in our new office.

Happy Valentine's Day! We love you forever!

5 Things: All Things Traditional

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.

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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!