The Canned Ingredient That Makes Quiche Instantly Fancier

If you're looking to elevate your homemade brunch beyond basic eggs, potatoes, and toast, quiche is the answer. It's pretty simple to make, but it's so tasty and aesthetically pleasing that it'll seem like you labored for hours in the kitchen. And yet, as much as any quiche can upgrade your meal, using canned salmon will make your dish seem like it came straight from a French cafe.

There are plenty of reasons why you should always have canned salmon in your pantry, but it's the perfect way to add protein and flavor to your quiche with hardly any extra effort. You won't have to cook fish from scratch, and since the tins are pretty small, you likely won't have to waste leftovers.

While sausage and bacon make for tasty quiche additions (particularly in this bacon, onion, and goat cheese recipe), canned salmon is a lighter, more delicate option that pairs beautifully with eggs and vegetables. Essentially, all you have to do is drain it and flake it before adding it to your recipe.

If your canned salmon comes with the bones still in and the skin still on, you'll want to remove both. And if you want even more salmon flavor in your quiche, you can save some of the liquid it comes in and stir it into your whisked eggs later on. Then, there are a few ways you can add the fish to your dish. You could stir it into your filling mixture alongside ingredients like eggs, vegetables, and milk, which will get poured into your pie crust before going into the oven. Or, you could arrange your salmon as the first layer in your pie crust, before veggies and eggs — or sprinkle it on as one of the last steps, right before a final layer of cheese. Feel free to use as little as 6 ounces of salmon, or as much as 14 ounces, depending on how much of the flavor you want.

When it comes to other ingredients, you might want to keep your fish as the only protein in your quiche. But it pairs perfectly with the leeks, spinach, goat cheese, and arugula in our Spring Quiche recipe, as well as the sweet onion and spinach in our Crustless Spinach Quiche. If you're looking for more veggie variety, add salmon to our Loaded Vegetarian Quiche; and you can also sub it in for the smoked salmon in our Smoked Salmon and Spring Vegetable creation.