Smoked Mackerel Apple Salad

This mackerel salad recipe is a really tasty combination of gently roasted salad vegetables and smoked mackerel, all brought together with a mustard and honey dressing and some crunchy salad leaves. This Mackerel apple salad feels filling and satisfying to eat, but it’s also super healthy, high in fibre and protein, and packed with nutritious ingredients.

Mackerel Apple Salad is really easy to put together and makes a fantastic lunch in the spring when asparagus and new potatoes are in season. It would also make a great dinner, and you could easily double the ingredients to make enough to share.

This salad will help you get the goal of 2 portions of oily fish a week and about 2–3 portions of vegetables. Keeping the skin on the potatoes and including the asparagus ensures the salad high in fibre. While the mackerel provides protein and omega 3 fats.

Notes of Smoked Mackerel and Apple Salad

• New Potatoes You can use any new potatoes, but in this recipe, as it is the season for them, I have used some delicious Jersey Royals. These can often be expensive, but Aldi is selling 500g Jersey Royals for £1.59.
• Chopped Parsley I always have packets of the very handy chopped herbs from Waitrose, so I added Waitrose Chopped Parsley to this recipe.
• Mixed Leaf Salad Any salad or sliced lettuce would work, but I used Aldi Mixed Leaf Salad because has a great mix of colours and textures that work well with this recipe, and it is only 57p.

Here’s a close-up of the vegetables so you can see how they have been chopped. The potatoes have already been in for 10 minutes at this point to give them a headstart in cooking as they will need a little longer than the other vegetables. Make sure the vegetables are in one layer, but quite tightly packed. This will ensure they cook evenly and won’t dry out too quickly or burn.

Can you freeze Mackerel?

Once I open a packet of mackerel, I usually freeze the rest, so none goes to waste. However, it’s important that the mackerel doesn’t spend longer than 2 weeks in the freezer, as it starts to go bitter very quickly. If using frozen mackerel for this recipe, you can either leave the mackerel to defrost, it’s surprisingly quick and should be defrosted in 20 minutes.

Recipe Variations

• Add some raw chopped beetroot to the roasting dish and roast along with the other vegetable, or add some sliced cooked beetroot to the salad at the end. This could be an addition or instead of the radishes and asparagus.

INGREDIENTS  

For the roasted veg

• 250 g New Potatoes
• 1 Eating Apple
• 4 Radishes
• 100 g Asparagus
• Olive oil
• Salt

For the dressing

• 1 tbsp Olive oil
• 1/2 tsp Honey
• 1/2 tsp Wholegrain Mustard
• 1 tbsp Chopped Parsley
• 1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar, White Wine Vinegar or Lemon Juice
• A few grinds of Sea Salt

To finish

• A handful of Mixed Leaf Salad
• 1-2 Hot Smoked Mackerel Fillets

INSTRUCTIONS 

• Preheat the oven to 200℃
• Chop the new potatoes up into chunks, mix with a dash of olive oil and grinding of salt and put into the hot oven. Roast for 10 minutes.
• Meanwhile, chop the radishes and apple into small chunks, and the asparagus into thirds. Take the potatoes out and add the veg and a little more oil and salt and stir well. Roast for another 20 minutes.
• Meanwhile wash the salad leaves and mix together all the dressing ingredients.
• When the vegetable are cooked through, remove from the oven and drizzle over a couple of spoons of the dressing
• Stir some dressing into the leaves also the then layer on a plate the leaves, then the vegetables, then flake the mackerel on top. Drizzle over a little more of the dressing on the mackerel.

More Mackerel Recipes

Mackerel Quinoa