The breadcrumbs sizzle and spit on the egdes of my dairy free fishcakes, while a spurious few burn to a crisp on the sidelines. As the oil bubbles the pasty coating slowly turns a golden deliciousness.
There is something so comforting about breading and frying your food. That sense of some well-deserved junk food without the junk – a healthy midweek meal hidden under a crispy coating.
Those leftover, discarded ingredients and tins languishing in the cupboard take on a new life. The mashed potato from the night before, a bit of sweetcorn from the freezer and some nice oily tuna suddenly look like a dish you could serve up at a dinner party.
Making egg free fishcakes
As J is egg-free we cannot use the traditional flour, egg and breading method but I read about using a flour and water paste instead. And it works perfectly, gripping the potato mixture and gluing the breadcrumbs in place without leaving any heavy floury after taste.
I have deliberately kept this tuna and sweetcorn dairy and egg free fishcake recipe very simple to rustle up for a family meal but you could easily make it a bit more adult friendly by adding 4 chopped spring onions and 1tsp dijon mustard.
- 300g mashed potato
- 1 small can tuna
- 90g sweetcorn
- 150g breadcrumbs
- 2tbs flour
- 2tbs dairy free butter
- 2tbs olive oil
- Mix mashed potato, tuna and sweetcorn together.
- Combine flour with water (about 180ml) to make a paste the texture of thick double cream.
- Form potato mixture into palm size patties, dredge in flour mixture and roll in breadcrumbs.
- Put butter and oil in frying pan and cook patties over a medium heat until golden on each side.
I know my children will love these so thanks for the recipe. Commenting for myself and on behalf of BritMums and thanking you for taking part
Hope they enjoy them!
I don’t know why but I haven’t made fish cakes since I was at school and really need to put that right. Yours look fab, thank you for entering #CreditCrunchMunch with a super frual dish:-)
Thanks Camilla, hope they are as good as your childhood ones! They are super quick, easy and frugal.
Yummy yummy! A good old family favourite. You cannot beat a fish cake and like you say, it brings alive a boring old tin of tuna and some left over potatoes!
The Sweetcorn is a really nice idea!
These look yummy – we’re gluten free too but that’s easily solved with either GF breadcrumbs or a polenta crumb, Thank you!
My son is allergic to eggs and dairy. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe 🙂
No problem, I hope you both enjoy them! There are lots of other egg and dairy free recipes on here too.
Thanks for sharing this recipe. My baby son is dairy and egg allergic, we’ve not long started doing baby-led weaning with him and it’s hard to know what to give him that he can pick up easily.
I used haddock instead of tuna and added wilted spinach and fried spring onion as they needed using up. I put the spinach and spring onion and sweetcorn in the food processor a bit partly to ‘hide’ the veg from my 3 year old but also thinking it would help the patties stick together..
I was worried the recipe would be dry without milk or butter in the mash but it was great and really easy to form into patties. Managed to make a great meal out of a very nearly empty cupboard/freezer. The baby ate some, my husband was impressed and my daughter said “Mummy, make this again please” 🙂
I wasn’t sure about the quantity of water for making the flour paste though. I tried 180 mls as in recipe and it was loads. Should it be 18 ml? I fudged my own version to get the creamy consistent and used a lot less water.
I’m glad it went down so well and you were able to adapt it! Thanks for letting me know about the amount of water. I will test it again. It’s an old recipe but a really popular one so I have been meaning to come back and take a look at it again.