If you want to incorporate more sardines into your diet, here are some great recipes!
1 – Sardine Sandwiches (Sardine Tartines?)
Sardines are great on bread – a classic recipe would be plain sardines on toast. You can level it up a little bit with some butter and oil – here are my favorite variations:
- Sardines on baguettes with butter
- Sardines on sourdough toast with cottage cheese and salt
- Sardines on sourdough toast with chopped red onions and tomatoes, olive oil and salt
2 – Sardine Eggs
No, I don’t mean a sardine omelette – but sardines with eggs is a better combo than you think! These are often called “Fisherman’s Eggs.” There are lots of variation of this recipe online.
These are generally some sorts of veggies (think peppers, tomatoes, onions) baked with eggs and sardines. I was somewhat skeptical at first, but they were actually delicious!!!! The umami of the eggs with the flavor of the sardines and the complementary veggies – it’s actually really nice. This was also my introduction to warmed sardines – which I thoroughly enjoyed.
3 – Miso Soup with Sardines
This has become my go-to breakfast after morning workouts. I love a bowl of rice, sardines, seaweed, and miso paste. The miso paste gives a nice fermented flavor kick, and the bone-in / skin-on sardines give me the protein I need for a full day after breakfast.
I recommend mixing the miso paste into warm-ish water + the liquid from the sardine can, then adding rice and sardines. Garnish with kraut if you’d like an extra fermented food bonus 🙂
4 – Sardine Pasta
I think this is the most underrated use of canned seafood. It is so easy to whip up some pasta and make a quick cream-based (or tomato sauce-based!) sauce with sardines and the liquid in the can. For this, it’s probably better to use sardine fillets than skin-and-bone sardines for the sake of texture. Here’s a great example recipe with lemon, capers, and chili!