A dollop of homemade ikura adds a tasty finishing touch to a bowl of Alaskan soul.

You know it’s a good day when a recipe for bacon fried rice shows up in your inbox. That’s just what happened a few days ago when our blog friend Chef Mimi posted a recipe for this very dish. Who doesn’t love fried rice? The slightly nutty flavor of sautéed day-old rice tossed with scrambled eggs and onions is a regular on menus from Kodiak to Kyoto. Add bacon, and a favorite truism comes into play: anything is better with bacon. Right?

Well, we actually didn’t ship out any bacon in our annual shopping this past year. Don’t worry, we’re hardly turning vegan. 😉 We just decided that as much as we love the flavor, the texture, the – well, everything – about bacon, it really isn’t good for our health. We’ve discovered that we can substitute smoked salmon in most recipes that call for bacon and be very satisfied.

Enter Chef Mimi’s recipe for bacon fried rice. A quick check of our pantry revealed that we had on hand most of the ingredients she uses and delicious substitutions for those we didn’t. A swap of smoked salmon for bacon, a switch of snow peas for petite peas, a few extra splashes of flavors we have around and, voila, we came up with an Alaska twist which came out beautiful and delicious. We give you Smoked Wild Salmon Fried Rice.

Smoked Wild Salmon Fried Rice

Ingredients

• 4 cups cooked rice, leftover rice works great
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups diced sweet onion such as Walla Walla
• 1/4 cup chopped garlic
• 1/2 cup diced carrots
• 1 cup chopped snow peas
• 3/4 cup canned corn
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 8 oz. smoked salmon

Directions

1. Set out cooked rice to bring to room temperature.
2. In a small bowl, mix together fish sauce, lime juice, soy sauce, and mirin. Set aside.
3. In a large pan, heat oil over medium-high heat.
4. Sauté onions for about 2 minutes.
5. Add garlic and continue to cook for about 2 additional minutes.
6. Add carrots and sauté for another 2 minutes.
7. Mix in snow peas and corn. Cook for an additional minute.
8. Gently stir in rice. Let mixture heat thoroughly.
9. Make a well in center of pan.
10. Add eggs and scramble them in the well.
11. When eggs are just cooked through, add in salmon.
12. Stir entire mixture so that all ingredients are evenly distributed.
13. Toss the rice mixture with fish sauce mixture.
14. Optionally, garnish with green onions, or salmon roe.
15. Serve immediately.