Salmon Spread Might Just Be the Most Alaskan Food | Travel

When Laureli Ivanoff wants a snack, the Inupiaq writer reaches for a bowl of salmon spread. The simple dip of flaked salmon, mayonnaise and “whatever you have in the fridge” hits the spot, whether she’s out hunting with her family or just looking to use up the leftovers from a baked salmon dinner. “It’s just a really easy, efficient, delicious way to enjoy salmon,” she says.

It’s also a perfect dish for sharing. Ivanoff, who has spent her career focusing on the lives of rural Alaskans and Native Alaskans, even set out bowls of it for guests to eat as they arrived at her wedding. “You just put it out with crackers,” she says. “I don’t really know many people who do not enjoy salmon spread.”

That’s true not only where Ivanoff lives—in the 700-resident town of Unalakleet, Alaska, located where the mouth of the Unalakleet River meets the Bering Sea—but also across much of the state. Salmon spread, similar to tuna salad but with an added smokiness, has managed to achieve a certain level of ubiquity, despite the many different communities and food cultures within Alaska. Some grocery stores will make the snack in-house, and many Alaskans also have their own family recipe.

“If you’re going to find a food that sits right at the center of how people eat here, salmon made into a spread is eaten pretty much like across the state in all regions,” says Julia O’Malley, an Anchorage-based journalist, cook and author of The Whale and The Cupcake, a book about Alaska’s foodways. “Smoked salmon spread is the most common thing.”

Of course, there would be no salmon spread without salmon itself. The fish is an Alaskan food staple, one that has been tied to Alaska Native cultures for at least 11,800 years, according to Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game. It plays an especially pivotal role because of its accessibility as a wild protein. As of 2017, a resident of a rural community in Southeast Alaska consumed an average of 75 pounds of salmon annually, while the U.S. national average for annual seafood consumption was less than 15 pounds per person, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As an “annexed” place distant from the rest of the contiguous United States, as well as other…