Salmon & Avocado Breakfast Plate
A no-cook AIP breakfast plate of flaky salmon, avocado smashed with lemon, and cucumber quick-pickled in sauerkraut brine.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Smoked salmon, or leftover cooked salmon from the night before, with avocado smashed with lemon and cucumber quick-pickled in the brine from the sauerkraut jar. Nothing goes on the stove and it still takes fifteen minutes, ten of which are the cucumber pickling while you do everything else. That brine is the part worth knowing about: it is already sour, salty, and alive with what the cabbage fermented in, so it seasons the cucumber in the time it takes to mash an avocado. It also answers breakfast on an autoimmune protocol, where eggs are off the table and most of the standard answers go with them.
The sauerkraut is not decoration. Salmon and avocado are both rich and both soft, and a plate of two rich soft things reads as heavy by around the third bite. Sauerkraut is sharp, cold, and crunchy, which is three kinds of contrast arriving at once, and it resets your mouth between bites the way a squeeze of lemon does on smoked salmon. Leave it off and the plate is lovely for two minutes and tiring after five.
Salmon and avocado between them cover protein and fat in a form that needs no bread underneath it, which is why a plate this small holds a whole morning together. Eight ounces of salmon split across two plates is a real portion rather than a garnish, and that is the part that decides whether you are back in the kitchen at ten. Swap in mackerel and you have our Mackerel and Wilted Greens Breakfast Plate.
Ingredients
- 8 oz cooked or smoked salmon
- 1 avocado, sliced
- 1 cucumber, sliced
- 1/2 cup sauerkraut
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
Instructions
- Quick-pickle the cucumber in the kraut brine: Slice the cucumber thin, and rather than draining the sauerkraut into the sink, spoon two tablespoons of its brine over the slices with a pinch of the salt and turn them over with your fingers. Leave them ten minutes. The brine is already sour, salty, and full of what the cabbage fermented in, so it does in ten minutes what a vinegar pickle would need an hour to do, and it costs nothing to use.
- Smash the avocado with the lemon and salt: Halve the avocado, take out the pit, and scoop the flesh into a bowl. Add the lemon juice and the rest of the salt and mash it with a fork until it is a coarse spread with some pieces still whole, rather than working it to a paste. The lemon slows the browning and the salt draws the flavor out of a fruit that tastes of very little unseasoned. Taste it and add more lemon if it seems flat.
- Flake the salmon and check for pin bones: If you are using cooked salmon, break it into large pieces with your fingers along the flakes it wants to separate into, and run a fingertip down the center line where pin bones sit. Smoked salmon needs nothing but separating the slices so they are not one folded block. Take it out of the refrigerator now and leave it about ten minutes, because both kinds taste of considerably more at room temperature than straight from the cold.
- Build the plate around the smash: Spread half the avocado smash across one side of each plate in a thick layer rather than a neat quenelle, so there is something for the salmon to sit against. Lay the salmon over and beside it, then lift the pickled cucumber out of its brine and arrange it in a loose pile. Give each plate a small mound of the drained sauerkraut in a corner, when everything else is in place, where it can be eaten a forkful at a time rather than salting everything else.
- Finish with the oil and eat it cold: Drizzle the olive oil over the cucumber and the smash and leave the salmon alone, since smoked salmon is already cured and salted and cooked salmon was seasoned the night before. Eat it straight away, while the cucumber still has snap and the avocado has not started to dull at the edges. A second squeeze of lemon at the table is never wrong here.
Variations
- Add more vegetables: sliced radish, shaved fennel, or a handful of arugula fill out the plate without needing to be cooked.
- Add a sharper edge: a spoonful of grated fresh horseradish or a few slivers of pickled ginger over the salmon wakes it up without needing anything cooked.
- Add an egg: a jammy soft-boiled egg halved over the top turns this from a light plate into a breakfast that will hold you until lunch, though egg takes it off the autoimmune protocol.
- Change the ferment: kimchi in place of the sauerkraut takes the plate in a different direction, and a spoonful of capers works if you want the brine without the ferment.
- Make it a bowl: pile everything over a scoop of cooked quinoa or a piece of toasted rye and let the olive oil and lemon soak in. Both are grains and the rye also brings gluten, so either one takes the plate off the autoimmune protocol.
Storage & Leftovers
Once smoked salmon is opened it wants eating within a few days, wrapped tightly and kept in the coldest part of the refrigerator rather than the door, since air dries the surface and dulls both color and flavor. Go by the date on the package. Leftover cooked salmon holds about three days. Neither improves with sitting, so buy the size of package you will actually get through that week.
The smash is the part that will not wait for you. Mash it at the last minute: lemon slows the browning on the cut surfaces without stopping it, and a bowl of it pressed under plastic wrap still dulls by the next morning. The pickled cucumber is the opposite and keeps three days in its brine, getting sharper as it goes, so that is the piece worth making a double batch of while the jar is open.
Everything else stores easily, as long as it stores separately. Sauerkraut keeps for weeks under its own brine, cooked salmon sits happily in a covered container, and cucumber slices hold two or three days. What does not work is dressing a plate in advance: the oil and lemon pull water out of the cucumber, the salmon takes up the salt, and by morning the whole plate is sitting in a shallow puddle.
Notes & Tips
- Check for bones: if you are flaking a baked fillet, run your fingers across it first, because pin bones are easy to miss and hard to enjoy.
- Add avocado fresh: slice or mash the avocado just before serving so it stays green and creamy.
- Buy the salmon already cooked: a cold-smoked side or a leftover baked fillet both work, and this plate is built to come together without turning on a burner.
- Dress at the last second: the lemon and oil should go on as the plate reaches the table, since cucumber softens fast once salt and acid touch it.
- Do not drain the sauerkraut too hard: a little of its brine on the plate acts as extra dressing, though a very wet mound will run into the avocado.
- Go light on the salt: smoked salmon and sauerkraut both arrive salted, so taste the plate before you add any of your own.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Salmon and avocado are both rich, in two different ways, one marine and one plant, and the cucumber and sauerkraut cut straight through them. That pull between soft, fatty and sharp is what makes a cold plate eat like a real breakfast.
- Salmon flakes into silky pieces and tastes savory enough to want first thing in the morning, and it is one of the very few foods supplying vitamin D naturally, alongside its long-chain omega-3 fats.
- Avocado sliced thick goes buttery against the fish, and its monounsaturated fat, fiber and potassium are what let a few slices sit as satisfyingly as they do.
- Sauerkraut brings the sour, funky note the plate is built around, and the refrigerated kind is a live ferment, so the cabbage arrives with bacteria that feed into your gut along with the crunch.
- Cucumber stays cold and snappy against everything else, and the olive oil and lemon added at the end pull the plate together, the acid sharpening the salmon and the oil smoothing the whole thing out.
- As you eat, let the sour bite of the ferment land against the soft salmon and avocado, and start your morning slowly enough to taste it rather than finishing with one hand on your phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is smoked salmon AIP compliant?
It can be, but check the label. Look for one cured with just salt and no sugar, pepper, or added spices, since some smoked salmon includes nightshade seasonings.
What makes this filling enough for breakfast without eggs?
The protein from the salmon plus the fat from avocado and olive oil keep you satisfied, which is exactly how AIP breakfasts work around the no-egg rule.
How do I know the salmon is done?
It's ready when it flakes easily with a fork and looks just opaque in the middle. It's better to pull it a touch early than to overcook it.
How long does it keep?
Built, it does not keep at all: the cucumber weeps and the avocado dulls within a few hours. In parts it is straightforward. Cooked salmon and cut cucumber hold about three days, sauerkraut keeps for weeks in its brine, and the avocado is best left whole on the counter until the morning you want it.