I'm whippin up some fish. Has anyone tried the potlatch seasoning yet? I'm no chef but sometimes people think I am cause I slap some of this stuff on! Terrific baked or broiled or grilled.
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Potlatch? MT is throwing a big party and is giving away all his fishing gear? Awesome !!

No, wait. This is about a canned spice mixture from Williams Sonoma. Never mind.

I've never tried W-S Potlatch, so I can't comment there. But instead I tried praying to the great god Google, and one of his subordinates responded with the following recipe for homemade potlatch seasoning:

4 parts kosher salt
3 parts each chili powder and black pepper
1 part each ground cumin, crushed red pepper flakes, celery salt, garlic powder, onion powder, dried oregano

I mixed this up, and it wasn't bad, but not great either (a bit salty). So checking MT's W-S link (after I'd made up the spice mixture - Doh!), I discover real Potlatch has paprika, basil and coriander, while ersatz Potlatch has cumin, celery salt, onion powder and garlic powder. So it's probably not even close. So much for foodnetwork.com and every other site that refers to the same recipe.

But the W-S ingredient list looks a bit like the blackening seasoning recipe that I already use:

1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cayenne
1 1/2 tsp pepper (orig recipe was half white, half black, but I use all black)
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp sage

Triple recipe to get one spice islands spice jar full.

Maybe a bit of fiddling with the two recipes might get me closer to the store-bought stuff, or maybe even beyond. I liked the hint of cumin in the fake potlatch.

I will keep you posted, but in the meantime would welcome hearing the results from anyone else experimenting in this area.

I'm probably too late for mt's party anyway, given the date of his post, and besides, Ely's a long way to drive for expert-level fishing gear that I likely wouldn't have a clue how to use. Oh well.

Joe_Schmeaux wrote on May 11^th, 2010 at 12:19am:

I will keep you posted, but in the meantime would welcome hearing the results from anyone else experimenting in this area.

I just bought a small bag of the stuff for $10 at W_S.  (Boring, I know.)  I'm going to take it with me next week up to the QP.  I'll mail in my opinion if/when I return.  

prouboy

Puckster wrote on May 11^th, 2010 at 6:55pm:

Joe_Schmeaux wrote on May 11th, 2010 at 12:19am: I will keep you posted, but in the meantime would welcome hearing the results from anyone else experimenting in this area.  I'll mail in my opinion if/when I return.   prouboy

Mike, do what you want but from what I've been able to gather around here it seems best to stay off the water during the humpers breeding season.

BTW, with the potlatch just remember the old brylcream commercial......"a little dab will do ya".........

I'll heed your advice on the potlatch MT.  I will also be packing my trusty fish mix (breadcrumbs/parmesan cheese/corn meal/italian seasoning/garlic powder/onion salt) but will be sure to try Potlatch one night.  I might even try combining the two...we'll see.

prouboy

Imitation potlatch seasonng continued:

Tried adding the missing ingredients to the recipe posted earlier. Maybe it was a bit better, but the previous recipe was just too salty (for my taste, anyway), and the cumin needs to be cut back too. Time to restart from scratch, using only the W-S ingredients.

As a way of using up the rest of the fake potlatch I made, I tried it on chicken (pretty obvious, seems to show up the seasoning flaws more) and potatoes. The latter worked pretty well, so those of you with real potlatch might want to try this:

Peel & cut potatoes into large dice. Boil or nuke til nearly done but still firm. Drain, sprinkle with seasoning and mix well. Then fry - I used butter, but veg. oil would probably work just as well.

Yeah, too many pots and too involved for canoe trip cooking, but otherwise it's easy, and different from "plain old boiled potatoes".

More to come (eventually).

OK, here is my "final" version of ersatz potlatch seasoning.

I ended up adding to the W-S list of ingredients to fill in the taste spectrum a bit, so I'm not expecting it to taste the same as the original. I was also trying to make sure it tasted significantly different from the blackening seasoning recipe I posted earlier.

Trunklatch Seasoning:

1.5 parts salt
3 parts paprika
1 part cayenne
1 part chili powder
1 part black pepper
2 parts ground dried lemon peel
1 part oregano
1 part basil
1 part coriander
0.5 parts cumin
0.5 parts thyme
0.5 parts garlic powder

If "1 part" is "1/2 tsp", you will end up with a 1 or 2 meal sized test batch.
If 1 part = 2 tsp, this gives one spice islands spice jar full.

All of the ingredients should be readily available, if they're not in your spice rack already, except for the lemon peel. You can make that yourself, by shaving off the outer yellow part of the peel of a fresh lemon (the zest) with a potato peeler or paring knife and then drying it (air-dry or dehydrator, not in the oven). Store the dried shavings  in an airtight container and grind to powder as needed.

You will probably have to grind the oregano, thyme, and basil to a powder too, since these normally come as leaf flakes (doh!). If you have fresh herbs and dehydrate them yourself, you may want to cut back the quantity a bit.

You may also want to adjust the cayenne quantity, depending on how spicy you want the seasoning to end up, and how hot your paprika and chili powder are.

And of course you can adjust anything and everything else depending on your personal tastes too.

Good luck!