Here fishy fishy fishy

The Miller homestead focuses mostly on growing vegetables, but we also take part in harvesting fresh local protein when the opportunity arises. Late September is the beginning of the local Salmon run. While the pacific northwest seems to get all the salmon run press, we have one as well, right within the city limits of Rochester.


Last year I went out with a few friends and tried to catch salmon with absolutely no luck, not even a bite. This year, I've been out a couple times with my friend Mike. The first time I had one on, but it got off as we were trying to figure out how we were going to land it without a net. The second time, Mike brought a net and we fared better. He landed this "small" 14lb King Salmon. I say small because other people who were nearby told us that this was smaller than average and they get a lot bigger (up to 40lbs or so).

After spending a little while figuring out how to gut it and remove the head, we took it home for further processing.
We probably spent about 1.5 hours cutting this thing up. Mostly it took that long because we didn't really know what we were doing, but it also took a while to remove all the pin bones. In the end, we were left with two sizable filets that we portioned. In the end there was about 5.5lbs of meat. I haven't actually had a chance to try it yet, but hopefully its yummy.

I was a bit hesitant to eat the fish since I had heard some unflattering things about Lake Ontario Salmon, but I did give it a try. I pan seared the Salmon and did a side-by-side comparison to some wild Washington state Coho salmon. In the picture below, the Coho is the pinker one. I actually had some wild King from Washington state and it was paler than the coho, but not as pale as the fish we caught. The Lake Ontario Salmon was significantly milder than the wild Coho. Much less fishy, but also less flavor in general. The texture was good. It was moist and soft. Not bad at all. I would eat it again, which is good since I have another 1.5 lbs of it! Also of note from this meal, the beans and potatoes are from the homestead, as well as the rosemary and sage used to season the potatoes and fish. Also had a pretty solid harvest from the garden this week. >1 lbs of bell peppers, >2 lbs of green beans, plus small amounts of broccoli, peas, and small peppers. The peppers that you see in the picture below had to be harvested because the branch they were on broke off due to the weight of the peppers and the heavy rain we got over the weekend.