As a kid, I didn’t like lox.  I really wanted to – the grownups treated it as an iconic pleasure; like sex you could talk about.  It was moist, pink and pliable, with a raw, fresh smell unlike anything else in my food world, and at nine or ten I just wasn’t ready for it.

Smoked whitefish, though, was geldt.  A golden, wizened centerpiece that looked like prehistory on a platter.  It was sweet, salty, smoky and chewable.  Best of all you got to take it apart yourself, peeling back the skin and then prying the flesh off the bone with a butter knife.  It was like eating a science project.

A truly complete post-holiday breakfast buffet would include both lox and whitefish.  Lox was always  the glamour fish, but it’s hard to say, objectively, which is better on a bagel.  In fact, objectively, I would have to try both.

Whole chunks of smoked whitefish squashed into a layer of chive cream cheese on a pumpernickel bagel is driving and elemental, like a three-chord blues.  Lox on a poppy seed bagel, by contrast, is lush and operatic.  There’s no way I can choose, except in the moment.

In a way, smoked whitefish is a true rarity.  I can’t smoke whitefish at home.  I’d be happy to try, but here in New England I can’t even buy the raw material.  Lake whitefish, coregonus clupeaformis, is fished commercially from the Great Lakes, and nearly all of their eastbound output is headed for one location: the Acme Smoked Fish corporation in Brooklyn, NY.

In my long life, I doubt I’ve ever had a smoked whitefish that wasn’t made by Acme.  In fact, until 2012, when the great smoked fish artisan Aftabudin Rayman passed away, I doubt I’ve even had a smoked whitefish that he never laid hand or eye on.  Luckily, it was a benevolent monopoly, and has since been carried on by his trainees.

Smoked whitefish from Acme or its sister brand, Blue Hill Bay, is a nice product.  Smoked whitefish salad, a kind of denatured version of the whole chunks, is another thing entirely.  No commercial processor can afford to strip off the whitefish chunks by hand, and mix them in gently with the other ingredients.  They’ll extrude it, more or less violently, resulting in more of a smooth spread than a salad.

To keep the paste from tasting oily, the Acme folks actually add whiting, to help it absorb the mayo.  I’m making this sound worse than it is, but your own whitefish salad, made fresh and a little chunky, will arrive with the force of revelation.  And it’s certainly no more effort than making a tuna salad.  Or you can do like the much-admired Mile End Deli folks and try a contrarian recipe with no mayo and pickled asparagus.

This brings us to the topic of dissection. I’ve found that a lot of folks are intimidated by a humble smoked whitefish.  They’re not sure how to get the meat out.  It may also look, to the unaccustomed eye, like something that washed up at low tide and then got left in the sun.  The whole fish can also be hard to find, though vacuum-packed, center-cut pieces are often stocked in my local supers, and are perfectly fine, as-is or in salads.

So find some nice fish somewhere, prepare yourself to look it in the eye before breakfast, strip off the skin, pry up the meat, and go. Below are some instructions for doing just that, and for a classic deli salad version with sour cream that helps mitigate the natural oiliness of the fish.  This is as simple as it gets – no glamour, just good.

Smoked Whitefish Salad

Here’s how to dissect your own whitefish, for bagel chunks or salads.