Photo: Metukkalihis · CC BY-SA 3.0
Cullen Skink (Smoked Haddock, Potato and Milk Soup)
The soup of Cullen on the north-east coast of Scotland: smoked haddock poached in milk, and the milk turned into a soup with potato and onion. Some of the potato is mashed in to thicken it and the fish goes back in flakes at the end. Served with bread or oatcakes.
Ingredients
- smoked haddock · finnan haddie, or undyed cold-smoked haddock400 g
- milk600 ml
- floury potatoes · in 1.5cm dice400 g
- onion · finely chopped1
- butter30 g
- water400 ml
- bay leaf1
- single cream · optional50 ml
- chives or parsley · chopped1 handful
- salt and pepper · at the very end, after tasting
Steps
- ⏲ 8 min
Melt the butter in a pan and soften the onion over low heat for about 8 minutes without letting it colour.
- ⏲ 15 min
Add the potatoes and water, cover and simmer about 15 minutes, until the potato is soft enough to break.
- ⏲ 5 min
Meanwhile warm the milk with the bay leaf in another pan, add the haddock and poach at a bare simmer for 5 minutes, until it flakes.
- ⏲ 3 min
Lift out the fish, discard skin and bone and break it into large flakes. Keep the milk.
- ⏲ 1 min
Crush about a third of the potato against the side of the pan to thicken the liquid, then strain in the poaching milk.
- ⏲ 3 min
Add the fish and the cream and heat to just below the boil. Taste, then season and scatter over the chives.
Variations
- Water instead of milk. Older recipes simmer everything in water and add milk at the end. Lighter, and the fish comes first.
- All the potato mashed. For a thicker soup, mash the lot.
- Oatcakes. Crumbling oatcakes into the bowl is the traditional way to eat it.
- Other smoked fish. Smoked cod or smoked salmon also work.
Tips
- Avoid bright yellow smoked haddock. The colour is dye, not smoke.
- Soften the onion without colour. This is a white soup.
- Salt at the end. The smoked fish is already salty.
- Poach the fish separately and add it last. Boiled in the soup it falls apart and disappears.
- Once the cream is in, do not let it boil hard (dairy and heat).
More detail and the reasons why (1)
- Cold-smoked fish is still raw. Finnan haddie is hung in smoke at a low temperature that flavours it without cooking it, so it has to be poached, and while it poaches the smoke moves into the milk. Keeping that milk as the liquid of the soup is the point of the dish. The hot-smoked salmon in lohikeitto is the other case: it is already cooked and needs only warming through. It is the same idea as clam chowder, whose base is the liquor the clams give up, except that here the poaching milk does that job.
The basics behind this dish
- Stocks and Broths: Clarity, Time, and Why You Do Not Salt ThemWhat separates a clear stock from a cloudy one is temperature, not ingredients. Why you start in cold water, how long each ingredient wants, and why salt comes later.
- Salt: When You Add It Matters More Than How MuchThe same amount of salt either draws water out or seasons all the way through, depending on when it goes in. Osmosis, seasoning in layers, and why salt types are not interchangeable by volume.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
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