Alaskan Cuisine [merged]

I just returned from a trip to Alaska (our third). This will be my first attempt to post a picture, so be kind. Hopefully more will follow.



Alaskans eat lots of smoked salmon (and you always disclose what kind of salmon it is in Alaska). We ran into this local item one day: smoked salmon tips. The one in the picture happens to be King. It is obviously a piece of flesh attached to a fin that is cut off in the fileting process that can't be used for anything else. It is extra rich and fatty and enormously delicious. The analogy to rib tips is almost complete. They cost about $10.99 per pound, which is less than regular smoked salmon, but there is less to eat, so the price is similar. I doubt this stuff is exported anywhere.

Jonah

Well, the first one worked, so here's another.

Alaskans eat more Halibut than Salmon. Halibut is easy to fish and, due to its mild flavor, you can make just about anything with it. It is also extremely easy to filet and you get four per fish. With some coming in well over 100 pounds, you can see the advantages.

In our little fishing town of Petersburg you can't buy fish in a store because everyone is a fisherman or knows one. Restaurants, however, do serve plenty of fish.

One odd place was Tina's, which serve two or three Korean dishes, five or six Mexican and a bunch of American.



Here is a typical lunch we had, all made out of Halibut. Halibut tacos (curiously with cabbage)



Halibut fish and chips



And one of the most common dishes in Alaska, the Halibut burger, which comes grilled or deep fried, here the more common deep fried





Jonah

Thanks for the post, Jonah. I recently took a cruise to Alaska and one of my first things to do at each port of call was to get away from the cruise ship owned stores and restaurants in each town and seek out some local fare.

I got addicted to the deep fried halibut as well as the salmon jerky that could be found in many of the ports of call.

Surprisingly, the best Halibut and chips that I found came at Icy Point Strait, a little island owned by Celebrity where they have set up a nature center as a port of call. It was cruise ship owned, but clearly exceeded anything that we found in Juneau or Skagway which were our other ports of call.

I wasn't much a fan of the cruise ship aspect of my trip. I'd much rather see Alaska the same way that you did, town to town.

YourPalWill:

I hope you get back to Alaska and see the real state. We do lots of kayaking and camping and hiking in the wilderness (this was our third trip), and it's like no other place in the world. In one morning paddle this trip, we saw whales, bears, otters, sea lions, loons and eagles.

As for food, you have to look hard for good chow, despite the abundence of great local seafood. There is a lot of bad deep fried stuff. We did manage, this trip, to have locally caught Dungeness crabs, locally caught peel and eat shrimp, we ate both Halibut and Salmon that we caught and a lot of good smoked stuff.

Jonah

Jonah,

Thanks for the enjoyable and interesting posts. I imagine vegetables aren't really featured up there but, aside from the fish, what about game? Have you had any (relatively) exotic game up there, e.g. bear, or caribou?

A

About a million questions come to mind, but all about travel, rather than food, in Alaska. So I'll settle for just saying thanks for the post. And thanks for giving me yet another reason to try to get back to Alaska.

Antonius:

While Alaskans shoot and eat a fair amount of game, little is served in the mostly plebian restaurants. This is more something people do on their own. In past visits, we had moose. Many folks up there hunt one during the fall season, which can provide meat for most of the Winter. I can't recall what it was like, but it was good. I also believe we had caribou or elk (I can't recall) on a prior trip, but I can't recall much about it. We never had bear, nor any other really exotic game. You'd probably have to go hunting for that stuff.

Talk of moose reminds me that once I read that there is a wait list for roadkill moose. If a moose is killed by a train or car, they State looks to its list of people in the area, each of whom have agreed to come within a certain amount of time to butcher and cart away the usable meat.

Regards,
Jonah

Antonius wrote: I imagine vegetables aren't really featured up there

Surprisingly, Alaska is home to the largest vegetables in the world. The very long days (or shold I say, short nights) during the Summer make this possible.

stevez wrote:

Antonius wrote: I imagine vegetables aren't really featured up there

Surprisingly, Alaska is home to the largest vegetables in the world. The very long days (or shold I say, short nights) during the Summer make this possible.

Yes, but do they eat them?!? In any event, I belong to the 'smaller is better' school when it comes to most vegetables...



A

Antonius wrote:Yes, but do they eat them?!? In any event, I belong to the 'smaller is better' school when it comes to most vegetables...

Yes they do

A single onion will last an entire week.

But I'm with you on the less is more attitude when it comes to the size of my veggies as a general rule.

Antonius wrote:Have you had any (relatively) exotic game up there, e.g. bear, or caribou?

Antonius,

Ellen and I went on an Alaskan cruise a few years ago, a really nice trip, even for the cruise-phobic such as myself. One of the more exotic items, at least to me, were reindeer hot dogs. Surprisingly the hot dog stood on it's own merits, not simply as a novelty, well spiced, natural casing, meaty. A really good hot dog, must be why they seem so popular with locals.

I should note the reindeer hot dog was not had on the cruise ship, but from a small town cart during one of the stops. No picture of the reindeer dog*, though I do have one of me doing a bit of shipboard BBQ.



Enjoy,
Gary

*My camera was off on a helicopter glacier trip that afternoon.

stevez wrote:Surprisingly, Alaska is home to the largest vegetables in the world. The very long days (or shold I say, short nights) during the Summer make this possible.

stevez-- thanks for posting this link. I was wondering about this recently, and I have always been a skeptic regarding these giant vegetable claims, but I must concede that this pictorial evidence is compelling. One thing that is surprising is that the world-record doormat-sized zucchini does not seem inordinately large in view of the size of some of the forgotten ones in my past gardens. I would like to see the pumpkins, though!