Portlock smoked salmon

Some friends surprised me with a gift basket last week, which contained various crackers, some stone-ground mustard, some cheese spread, and three packets of Portlock ‘smoked’ salmon. And the basket, of course, and a cheese-spreader. I appreciate the thought. :slight_smile:

I can’t recommend Portlock salmon though. I found some on amazon, and it’s $5.99 for a 2 oz. packet like the ones in the basket. That’s $48/pound! I get my smoked salmon at Pike Place Fish Market. But at $30/pound, I don’t get it as often as I’d like. PPFM’s salmon is tender and moist and oily and smokey and red. Portlock isn’t red. It’s white. And there’s some sort of liquid (broth?) in the foil pack. Not very smoky. It does flake, and it’s tender in the same way chunk light tuna is. Kind of tasted like chunk light tuna, too.

I’ve grown accustomed to the rich salmony flavour of salmon that I know is actually smoked with smoke. Portlock might be, but I don’t know. And compared to PPFM… Well, it just doesn’t compare. Now they do have smoked king salmon on their website, and it does look like it’s supposed to look. It certainly looks better than what was in the 2 oz foil pack, and it’s less expensive per pound than that or PPFM’s. It might be good.

But I can’t recommend the 2 oz. packets.

I love smoked fish…of any kind, apparantly, as long as it’s fresh; a friend’s father smoked some fresh-caught trout and it was EASILY as good as any smoked salmon I’ve had.

While even home-smoking likely uses some chemicals, I’d definitely recommend sticking to the freshest stuff you can get, vs. the commercial packed kind. The taste difference is worth it, regardless of price. <3

I like Portlock, but I’m not comparing it to something from Pike Place. It’s not the best I’ve had, but it’s very far from the worst.