Perfecting the Hokkaido Salmon Burger

Two weeks ago, I posted an attempt to make a better Hokkaido Salmon Burger than McDonald’s. The post proved to be pretty popular on Reddit, and got featured on Asiaone. 

Which was more popular than I expected, even for something I wouldn’t recommend people making. It doesn’t seem right to simply end there without a recipe I can actually recommend people to make. So… here’s the improved version of the “Hokkaido Salmon Burger”.

This time around, the buns came out fluffier than before, the salmon skin was crispy, patties were moist and the vegetables packed a good charred flavour with a savoury miso sauce. The thing that really ties the burger together is the zesty tartar sauce/remoulade with lemon juice and sansho pepper. 

The steps I took to reach this recipe are documented in the video. The timestamps on YouTube also has a quick 2 min rundown of the recipe, if that’s all you’re looking for. 

As for the name of the burger, I don’t really know what to call it. I think it tastes quite different from the original idea of “Hokkaido Salmon Burger”. But let me know what you think.

The recipe for the milk bread bun had one change: I used 2 eggs instead of 1 egg and 1 yolk for the dough (not reflected in the recipe below). You know, because what am I going to do with 1 egg white?

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Japanese Milk Bread Bun

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Servings 6 buns

Ingredients

  

Tangzhong

• 20 g bread flour
• 30 g water
• 60 g whole milk

Dough

• 120 g milk
• 9 g yeast
• 320 g bread flour
• 35 g sugar
• 7 g salt
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• Splash of milk and 1 egg for brushing optional

Instructions

 

• Combine Tangzhong ingredients in a pot and heat until it turns into a paste.
  
• Mix 120g whole milk with 9g of yeast. Sit for several minutes.
  
• 320g bread flour, 35g sugar, 7g salt, and mix.
  
• Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and mix.
  
• Add the Tangzhong and 1 egg and 1 yolk to the milk and flour mixture when it is well incorporated. Mix.
  
• 42g of soft butter and knead until the dough becomes less sticky. This might take up to 30 minutes by hand, or 8 minutes using a stand mixer.
  
• Shape the dough into a ball roughly, then placed into a greased bowl. Cover for 1.5 hours or until doubled.
  
• Take out the dough and deflate. Lightly flour a surface and then divide the dough evenly into 6 pieces.
  
• Shape each portion into a bun or ball shape by tucking in the bottoms.
  
• Place them on a baking tray and cover. Let rise for another 1.5 hours or until doubled.
  
• Brush with egg wash.
  
• Bake at about 180C for 16 to 18 minutes until golden brown. Temperature depends on oven (mine is a toaster oven, so a conventional oven might require 200C for the same amount of time).

Notes

Yes, this is almost exact to Joshua Weissman's recipe. 

While waiting for the dough to rise, there’s time to prepare the other ingredients and tartar sauce.

Tartar Sauce with Sansho Pepper

Tartar sauce or remoulade for Hokkaido Salmon Burger

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Servings 6

Ingredients

  

• 2 boiled eggs
• 1 pickle
• half onion
• 1/3 lemon juice of
• 100 g mayonnaise japanese preferred
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp sansho pepper

See also  What exactly did the Samurai eat? And creating a samurai burger.

Instructions

 

• Dump everything in a bowl and mix
• Adjust to taste using lemon juice, mayonnaise, salt and sansho pepper.

Notes

If you feel that the salmon patty and vegetables already have enough salt, you can also remove the salt here.

This goes well with almost everything, so keep the rest in the fridge.

Chanchanyaki Vegetables

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Servings 2

Ingredients

  

SAUCE

• 1 tsp Miso
• 1 tsp mirin
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 tsp soy sauce Japanese

Vegetables

• oil
• 1/2 carrot shredded
• 2 cabbage leaves shredded
• 50 g shimeji mushrooms
• 1/2 onion optional

Instructions

 

• Mix sauce in a small bowl.
• Fry vegetables until they are lightly brown or charred. Chanchanyaki is supposed to be done on a griddle or grill, so doing this is to add more of that grilled flavour.
• Put in the sauce, then lower the heat and cover. Water from the vegetables will seep out and combine with the sauce.
• After 5 minutes, turn off the heat, then let sit for another 5 minutes. (Adjust according to how well your pan retains heat)
• Mix and it’s ready to be used.

I removed the onion as it is used for the tartar sauce, but you can certainly add it in here if you want.

After all the components are done, assemble the burger like so:

If you have excess salmon skin, you can also place the skin right below the top bun for extra crunch. Don’t place it below the veggies or it will get soggy from the juices. 

The burger is salty, so if you’re going to pair with a side, a refreshing salad would be suitable.

Some people seem to be interested in calculating costs for last week’s burger, and even did a rough calculation assuming I hold a 4-6k/mth job. But from my perspective as a content creator, this didn’t quite make sense since these content weren’t just churned out by “cooking for fun”.

Making these videos isn’t possible if I was employed in any form as it is a huge time investment. I go through roughly what making the last video required me to do near the end of the video, for anyone that’s interested.