Sweet Potato Fish Cakes Recipe • Turkey's For Life (2024)

What’s not to love about homemade fish cakes?

They’ve always been a regular in our house, usually if we have leftover fish from another meal.

Fish cakes are perfect for using up those leftovers and creating another satisfying dish.

However, recently something has changed. No longer are our fish cakes merely a vessel for using up leftovers.

They’ve become a celebration of two main ingredients…

Sweet Potato Fish Cakes With Smoked Trout

A bit of experimentation in the kitchen and we’ve stumbled across the foodie treat that is sweet potato fish cakes with trout!

Not just any old trout. This is local smoked trout and we love it!

When we lived in the UK, we loved to cook with sweet potato.

But, when we came to Turkey, for reasons unknown, it was impossible to get your hands on any.

Two New Ingredients

Fortunately, over the last few years, that has started to change.

And, whilst they’re certainly not in abundance, we are now able to buy sweet potatoes in the supermarkets.

We look forward to the day when local market stalls are stacked high with them because they certainly seem like a root vegetable that should grow easily, here.

And what about the smoked trout? We love all the fresh fish at Fethiye’s fish market but we also love smoked fish, too.

These days, we have a local fishmonger who sells lots of smoked and cured fish – the whole smoked trout, whilst not looking too pretty, is so tasty and really reasonably priced.

So, relatively recent, but now very regular, ingredients in the house.

And our healthy smoked trout and sweet potato fish cakes recipe was born.

Smoked Trout And Sweet Potato Fish Cakes Recipe

The smoked trout we use here is quite strong in flavour, but, because we’re making sweet potato fish cakes, the sweetness prevents the trout from becoming overpowering.

And we love an added bonus when we’re cooking up tasty dishes.

If you’re making sweet potato fish cakes rather than using regular potatoes, you’ll get the added health benefits.

In Turkey, trout is usually farmed and doesn’t grow to a large size.

Mountain and riverside restaurants advertise their ‘canlı alabalık’ (live trout) so you know you are eating it super fresh!

At places like Kırkpınar Restaurant, up in the mountains above the village of Üzümlü, you can even see your trout being fished from the water – look away if you’re squeamish.

The trout is often served simply grilled with a side salad and homemade chips.

One trout restaurant that we visited in Erciş in East Turkey, however, had trout cooked in various ways. All were sampled!

Average-Sized Trout

For our smoked trout and sweet potato fish cakes, we use two whole trout of the average size you find here in Turkey.

Once the fish has been removed from the bones, there’s around 250 grams of fish chunks.

If, like us, you’re using whole smoked trout, the filleting is a really simple process.

The skin is tough because the fish has been smoked so this peels away easily.

Remove The Fish From The Bones

In the collage photo above, you can see a straight line running along the length of the trout.

Once the skin has been removed, you can run your thumb along this line and it will part your fish flesh.

Then you can just gently tease the fish away from the bone, giving you two narrow fillets from each side of the fish – four fillets in all.

Repeat the process with your second trout and you should have 8 narrow fillets.

Give them a quick check for any small bones that might have come away from the carcass – nobody wants to eat a homemade fish cakes full of bones.

Create Your Sweet Potato Fish Cakes Mixture

Now, we’re just going to break the smoked trout up into chunks and add them to a mixing bowl. We like to add some extras, too.

For this sweet potato fish cakes recipe, we’re using finely chopped spring onion, parsley, dill and a squeeze of lemon juice.

And some smashed sweet potato, too, of course.

We Also Need A Dip For Our Fish Cakes

And what are homemade fish cakes without a relish or a dip?

There are lots of ideas you can play around with, here, for your sweet potato fishcakes.

We like a bit of a kick so this sweet and spicy chilli tomato relish is perfect for us. Some finely chopped spring onion sprinkled over the top for some extra crunch.

Our Turkish homemade ketchup is also ideal.

Other dips that would work well here are a mustard mayonnaise, or, if you want to go Turkish, a chilli yoghurt dip would provide some contrast to the sweetness of the potato.

And that’s how we make sweet potato fish cakes with smoked trout.

Drizzle your fish cakes with a relish or sauce of your choice. Then serve with a simple salad.

On this occasion, we served our sweet potato fish cakes with a rocket, spring onion and semizotu garnish.

Other perfect pairings would be a semizotu salatası (you can use watercress if you can’t find purslane) or a light and crunchy çoban salatası.

The great thing about homemade fish cakes is that once you get to the frying stage, you know everything is cooked.

All we’re doing with the frying pan and the oil is creating a crisp coating.

And when it comes to the eating of your fish cakes, breaking through that coating with your fork and savouring all those flavours inside – bliss.

Smoked Trout & Sweet Potato Fish Cakes Recipe – Ingredients And Method

Okay, let’s make smoked trout and sweet potato fish cakes.

Afiyet Olsun!

• If you follow this blog regularly, you’ll know we often share Turkish recipes. We do, however, also cook lots of dishes from all around the world.
• This smoked trout and sweet potato fish cakes recipe is not Turkish so you can find it, along with other dishes, in our section on International Recipes.
• If you want to, you can prepare your sweet potato fish cakes ahead of time and place them in the fridge before frying. We left some of ours in the fridge and cooked them up for lunch the following day.
• Smoked trout is also tasty on its own with a salad, as part of a potato salad or you could also make this fabulously tasty – and easy – smoked trout pate.