Salmon Soup

A memory from my life as a Navy brat....

We were living in half of a Quonset hut (picture a corrugated tin can cut lengthwise and tipped on its end with a door and a window at each end) waiting while the Navy finished building base housing.  Cold, wet, icy weather blowing in off the Puget Sound that chilled you to your marrow.  When the long winter days got to my Mom, and Dad found himself on KP, he cooked something like this:

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon butter or margarine
  • 1/4 teaspoon dry thyme leaves
  • 1/4 teaspoon dry marjoram leaves
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 stalk celery, sliced
  • 1 small green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 2 medium-size thin-skinned potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
  • 1/4 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 can (14.5 oz.) chicken broth
  • 1 large can (14.75 oz.) Red or Pink Salmon, drained
  • 2 cups half-and-half
  • salt & pepper to taste
Melt butter in a 3.5 to 4-quart pan over medium heat. Add thyme, marjoram, onion, celery, and bell pepper; cook, stirring often, until onion is soft (about 10 minutes). Blend in tomato paste. Add potatoes, paprika, pepper, and broth.

Bring to a gentle boil; cover and boil gently until potatoes are tender when pierced (about 20 minutes).

Break salmon into chunks, mashing the smaller bones and discarding the big ones and skin. Gently stir salmon and half-and-half into soup.

Season to taste with salt. Continue to cook just until soup is steaming hot; do not boil.

Serves 4

We gobbled up bowls of this simple soup with lots of saltine crackers and a plate of sliced tomatoes.  It drove the cold winter away and warmed our cockles.

More wonderful seafood recipes like this can be found at The Bumblebee Seafood web site.


Blithely...  is the creation of
Brenda Sinclair Sutton

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Photo courtesy of Brian Sharples|