This is IT!!!! Washington is the LAST state on our State Food Tour! I can’t believe it…at some points it never seemed like we’d get to the end…especially when we were getting to the end and we had used up many of the foods for other states. One of those states that was so difficult to choose was Washington. Ultimately, we decided on Salmon Sandwiches.
Salmon Sandwiches???
Yeah, I know—I was a little taken aback, too. I had never heard of, or even considered putting salmon on a sandwiches. I mean, salmon is delicious. It goes on a bed of rice. That’s the only way I’ve ever eaten it. But salmon sandwiches????
There Was Nothing Else But Salmon Sandwiches…
So like I said, Washington is the last state and by the time we got to the last state, we had ended up having A LOT of Washington’s cuisine from other states. We had Dungeness Crabs 🦀 for Oregon, we had salmon and king crab for Alaska, and we had had clam chowder for Massachusetts (even though it was a different kind of clam). The other cuisine like geoduck was also difficult to come by on the East coast. I did discover a recipe for Pho (pronounced Fuh), a Vietnamese soup dish. I was kind of excited about trying something totally different and made the list for the grocery store. Well, in the grocery store I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to find the ingredients for the Pho. And what we could find was super expensive. We ended up putting all of the ingredients back—I didn’t want to spend $60 on a meal I wasn’t even sure anyone would eat. Plus, the recipe was two days long. I’m not kidding. I would like to try the Pho sometime, but I think we will just go to a Vietnamese grocery store and try to find it there. Hubby suggested we do that and count it as our Washington meal but that’s CHEATING!
Back to the Drawing Board
I spent a good portion of the last week googling “what to eat in Washington”. I had to remember to add “state” to that because it was bringing up Washington D.C. cuisine , which we did not want. Also, I had to try “foods to eat in Washington state” otherwise I got actual places to eat in the state. Some of them sounded really great, like Beecher’s (they make handmade cheese…YUM!). I was kind of disappointed to discover they were in Seattle. (But apparently there’s another store in New York City—yah!) Finally I realized that there was no way around it. Salmon was the food to eat in Washington state. So, we were going to have to eat it in a different form than we had for Alaska. We were going to have to make salmon sandwiches.
Believe it or not, there are quite a few recipes out there for salmon sandwiches…
There were fried salmon sandwiches and salmon sandwiches with baked salmon. There were salmon sandwiches with mustard spread and ones with mayo spread. I spent a lot of time perusing the various recipes and decided to combine a few. Hey, it’s our sandwiches. We didn’t have to follow the recipe to a T—Hubby was a little annoyed at that since he’s very anal about following recipes. 
These sandwiches were so easy to make and surprisingly filling…
You start off by seasoning the salmon with salt and pepper. Then you pan-sear the salmon. I made Hubby do this because I didn’t want a repeat of The Salmon Calamity. He, of course, used his Lodge cast iron skillet (Get yours HERE ). 
<< ile he did that, I prepared the “special sauce”: 
<< 2 c. plain Greek yogurt (in case you’re wondering, that’s the whole little cup you get in the grocery store), chopped fresh dill (I used about a tablespoon), and 2 tablespoons of Frank’s Sweet Chili sauce. I spread the sauce on the buns, added mixed greens, tomato, and avocado slices. Hubby added the salmon and that was IT. The salmon sandwiches were completely done. Now, I’m sure you could make fries to go along with this—and a few months ago, we probably would have made fries or had chips. But we’re trying to cut back on the carbs and this was already a carb heavy meal with the Ciabatta roll. Turns out we didn’t need anything extra because the meal was just enough to fill us up. Seriously…no one even had a snack later in the night. So if you’re looking to try something different with your salmon, you can whip up this easy salmon sandwich in less than 15 minutes. 