Smoked Whitefish substitute

Substitutes for Smoked Whitefish with ratios

1. 2Smoked sablefish (smoked black cod)

   Close match

   Use the same amount

   The luxury option at any real appetizing counter, sometimes sold as smoked butterfish.

   What changes

   Extremely high in fat.

   Best for

   whitefish salad, appetizing platters, eating plain, bagel platters

   Richer and silkier than whitefish with a buttery, almost custardy flake, and usually more expensive. It is arguably better rather than merely equivalent, though the very high fat means a salad made with it wants less mayonnaise and more lemon to stay in balance.

2. 3Hot-smoked mackerel

   Different taste

   ¾ the weight

   Widely available, cheap, and vacuum-packed in most supermarkets.

   What changes

   Very oily and heavily smoked.

   Best for

   whitefish salad, smoked fish dip, pate, on rye with onion

   Considerably stronger: darker, oilier, more assertively smoky and more distinctly fishy, which is why you use less. A whitefish salad made with mackerel tastes like a mackerel salad, and it needs extra mayonnaise or sour cream plus a bigger squeeze of lemon to soften the smoke. Peppered mackerel is a poor choice unless you want pepper everywhere.

3. 4Hot-smoked salmon (not lox)

   Different taste

   Use the same amount

   Flaky, opaque, fully cooked smoked salmon, the kind sold in a solid chunk rather than in thin draped slices.

   What changes

   Best for

   whitefish salad, smoked fish dip, platters, scrambled eggs

   It flakes correctly and behaves right in a salad, but it is pink and unmistakably salmon, so a bowl of it on an appetizing platter looks wrong next to the lox. Flavor is bolder and less delicate. Fine at home, noticeable at a table where people know what whitefish salad should look like.

4. 5Smoked chub, or any smoked freshwater panfish

   Close match

   Use the same amount

   Chub is a small whitefish relative and is sold smoked in the same shops, often cheaper and in whole small fish rather than fillets.

   What changes

   Smoked lake trout and smoked carp play the same role.

   Best for

   whitefish salad, appetizing platters, eating plain

   This is essentially the same fish, so flavor and texture match closely. The work is different: whole small smoked fish means picking the meat off a lot of fine bones, so allow twice the prep time and expect roughly half the weight you bought to end up as usable flesh.

5. 6Canned smoked trout or kippers, drained

   Taste and texture differ

   Use the same amount by drained weight

   The pantry fallback.

   What changes

   Both are smoked oily fish in oil or brine.

   Best for

   smoked fish dip, pate, spread on crackers, emergency salad

   Softer and mushier than a fresh-smoked fillet, so the salad loses its flaky texture and comes closer to a pate, and it is noticeably saltier, so hold back on salt and add extra lemon. Drain hard and blot on paper towel or the whole mixture goes oily. Honest and workable, not the same thing.

6. 7Poached cod or haddock with smoked paprika and liquid smoke

   Different taste

   Use 1 pound fish plus ½ teaspoon smoked paprika plus ⅛ teaspoon liquid smoke for every pound of smoked whitefish

   Gently poach a mild white fish in salted water until it flakes, cool, then fold in the paprika, a tiny amount of liquid smoke and a good pinch of salt before adding the salad ingredients.

   What changes

   This is the honest least-bad option when no smoked fish is available at all.

   Best for

   whitefish salad only, smoked fish dip, when nothing smoked is available

   The flake and the body are right, and the flavor is clearly thinner: it tastes of mild fish plus smoke rather than of a fish that has been smoked. The fat is missing too, so use a full-fat mayonnaise and a spoon of sour cream. Start with less liquid smoke than you think; it goes acrid fast.

7. 8Cold-smoked salmon, lox or nova

   Taste and texture differ

   Not recommended as a swap

   The other great appetizing-counter fish, but a fundamentally different product: cured and cold-smoked so it stays raw, translucent and sliceable.

   What changes

   Best for

   bagels and cream cheese, platters, on its own

   It will not flake, so any recipe built on flaked fish, meaning whitefish salad and smoked fish dip, simply fails. It shreds into slippery ribbons. On a bagel platter it is an excellent thing to serve, just not a replacement for the whitefish salad next to it. Serve both if you can and neither pretends to be the other.