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Smashing Sardine Salad

Another “throw-it-together” meal (like yesterday’s salmon recipe) that is super-duper simple and packs a flavour punch. As long as you’ve dedicated time to innovative meal prep earlier in the day or week, you can have this baby ready in mere minutes.

I’ve used fresh sardines here because they had them at the fish shop yesterday. You can use sustainably sourced sardines in spring water if that’s all you have access to.

I’m not going to lie, I reckon this meal would be way better if you swapped the sardines for crispy salmon, ocean trout or barramundi, but sardines are cheap, sustainable and bloody nutritious. But no judgement if you glaze over that last part and only read: crispy salmon.

The veggie base works with any protein, such as leftover chicken (thigh meat or from a roast) or homemade rissoles. You can rotate the veggies you roast, the flavour of fermented veg, and even add some avocado to take things to the next, creamy level.

In fact, forget the meat or fish, you can easily just add a dollop of nut butter and generous handful of roasted nuts and call it a vegan day. But I’m digressing. Bitch slap me back to talking fish.

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Smashing Sardine Salad

  • 6 fresh sardine fillets (this sounds like heaps but bear in mind that sardines are tiny little things)
  • 1 cup fermented veggies. Make your own using this recipe or buy your from the fridge section of the health food store. Expensive but convenient and you’re helping keep awesome companies in business
  • 1 serving of your choice of roast veggies. I’m loving sweet spud and zucchini lately, but pumpkin, regular spud, beetroot, brussel sprouts, carrots, parsnip etc. all work too. See this post for roasting instructions and meal-prep tips.

Method

Toss leftover and chilled roasted veggies (I make a huge batch of roasted veggies to make the most of the oven being on and then divide into individual serves in glass containers and store in the fridge) together.

The easiest way to cook the sardines is straight after you’ve just taken roast veggies out of the oven. Remove veggies from the tray and place sardine fillets flesh-side down on the baking paper that the veggies were on (toxin-free if possible, such as the ‘if you care’ brand).

Place tray back in oven and cook for 4-5 minutes. Alternatively you can fry them on a medium heat in a little olive or coconut oil, salting the skins with sea salt to get “crispy” sardines.

Cooked sardines will last in a glass container in the fridge for 2 or so days after you’ve cooked them, so maybe cook up a few days worth for an instant lunch or dinner throughout the week.

Serve sardines on top of veggies and you’re done … SIMPLES!!!

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I used Kimchi; a combo of shredded cabbage, carrots, sweet spud, onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric, cayenne pepper and sea salt, in this particular salad – goodness was it spicy. Wowsers!