Output Stream of Consciousness

Here's something that might not last, and that'd be a bit of a shame: tinned salmon without bones.

It's Gold Seal's Flaked Pacific Pink Salmon, Skinless and Boneless. They have affixed an explanatory note to the top of the can:

NEW! Mild, tuna-like taste

Enjoy all the nutrition of salmon in a tuna-like taste and style. Try it in all your tuna recipes! Great for casseroles, pitas and sandwiches, or salads and spreads. Good for the whole family - kids love it!

Flaked Salmon that taste like tuna! Omega-3's without the fishy taste!

When I saw it on the shelf, I initially made a "yuk" face, but I don't know why. The mere idea of salmon without those awful bones in it seems like a wonderful idea. I think they probably should have pitched it that way (but I bet they sell the regular salmon, too :) Perhaps the entire pitch made me think that I didn't know what I was getting into ("am I being oversold on this?"). My head overrode my initial instinct and I bought a couple of cans just to try it out, but they did initially sit on the shelf for a couple of days.

Well, I finally decided to brave them by substituting this salmon in for tuna in a tuna melt.

You know what? It's pretty good. Surprisingly, it does taste a bit like tuna, though not as strong, and the salmon flavour is a mild aftertaste. It's barely pink, which does a bit more to further the illusion in a dimly-lit kitchen.

The finished "salmon melt" was pretty good, too. It was a little less dry than tuna in the chunks I hadn't broken up, and the taste stayed pretty much the same as pre-cooking, i.e. good and mild.

For those to whom it matters (not me), you don't get tuna smell in your pee, either :)

I hope it sticks around. I've avoided tinned salmon like the plague from memories of crunchy fish vertebrae and my poor wife has been slow to warm up to "good salmon" (marinated salmon filets) due to a similar sort of trauma. Nice to have a good experience with salmon in a can. Seems like somebody listened to the complaints about tinned salmon, though I do find it amusing that they seemed to want to address all of the concerns in a single product (at least that's what it seems like by choosing the tuna-iest salmon they could as well :)