Cullen Skink Recipe: Delicious & Hearty Smoked Fish Soup

You shouldn’t judge Cullen skink by its name. This delicious creamy smoked fish soup is a must try in Scotland! If you’re craving it, but can’t go to Scotland soon enough, this is my easy Cullen skink recipe to try at home!

My Cullen skink recipe is a low-sodium hearty soup perfect to warm up on a cold fall or winter day.

P.S. make sure to keep reading for some Cullen skink recipe tips and even a recipe to smoke your own haddock!

Psst! This blog post contains affiliate links in it which sends me a bit of extra money if you use them… at no extra cost to you!

What Is Cullen Skink?

Cullen skink is not what it sounds like at all, and honestly, I don’t even want to imagine what it sounds like…

Anyway, Cullen skink is a creamy soup with smoked white fish (usually haddock), onions, and potatoes. You can also find recipes with leek, and feel free to modify my recipe to include them!

Why Is It Called Cullen Skink?

Sounds like a very normal and delicious soup, right!? So why does it have such a strange name?

Cullen skink dates back centuries to the town of Cullen in Moray, Scotland. Skink is the Scottish word for shin, knuckle, or hough of beef. Skink was popular in Scotland to make soup broth. So Cullen skink actually referred to a beef broth soup.

But in the nineteenth century, beef was scarce in the town of Cullen. Haddock, on the other hand, was in full supply as they’re a fishing village. Because there was more than enough haddock to go around, the beef was replaced by smoked fish. And it stuck!

Find out more about the history behind this delicious soup here.

Low-Sodium Cullen Skink Recipe

This is a low sodium Cullen skink recipe. I don’t cook with a lot of salt and this soup is already salty because when you smoke fish, you brine it first in a water, salt, and sugar mixture.

The soup become salty enough (for me anyway) because the fish is quite salty. So I don’t add any extra salt to the soup, but of course, feel free to add to your taste if you want!

What You’ll Need For Smoked Fish Soup

There are a few things you’ll need to make Cullen skink at home. The hardest ingredient to find, will most likely be a smoked white fish. You can try your local fish store, but ours didn’t have any for sale. In the end, my partner bought a smoker and I said the only condition is that he had to make me smoked haddock.

You can find our recipe to smoke haddock below!

This recipe makes around 8 portions of soup.

Ingredients Smoked Fish & Potato Soup

Kitchenware

What To Do: Cullen Skink Recipe

The step-by-step recipe below, for some recipe tips continue reading below or jump to them now.

1. Wash, peel & cut 5-7 potatoes. Cut about 1-inch thick.
2. Dice 2 red onions.
3. Add butter to large saucepan (enough to cover the bottom). Once it’s hot, add onions and sauté until golden.
4. Once onions are cooked, add potatoes.
5. Add 600 ml of water and bring it to a boil (just cover the potatoes). Add more water if you need (remember you can always add but you can’t remove water).
6. Bring water to a boil, simmer uncovered until potatoes are soft.
7. At the same time, in the medium saucepan, add 750 ml of milk (or 475 ml cooking cream and 300 ml of milk), a bunch of chives to taste, 1-2 bay leaves, pepper to taste, and 3 smoked haddock fillets. Make sure the milk covers the fish.
8. Bring milk to a boil then simmer for around 3 minutes – stirring occasionally.
9. Taste milk, when the milk tastes smoky, remove the haddock from the milk (it might an extra few minutes).
10. When the potatoes are soft, add the milk broth to the potatoes and bring it to a boil.
11. Break the haddock into pieces (double checking for bones at the same time).
12. Once the broth is boiling and it’s well combined, add the haddock. Mix it around, gently to combine fish in the soup, and it’s ready to eat!
13. Add green onions for garnish.

Traditional Scottish Soup Recipe Tips

Make More Potatoes Instead Of Less

You can always add more water if it’s too thick, but you can’t add more potatoes if it isn’t thick enough. Unless you plan ahead…

I don’t know about you, but I’m all about thick and creamy potatoes soups. If you’re worried about the thickness of your soup, make more potatoes than just 5 (maybe use an extra 2 or more!). When the potatoes are soft, I’ll take out a few spoonfuls and set them aside.

This way, when I add in the cream broth and haddock, if I want the broth to be thicker, I already have cooked potatoes that I can easily add in to thicken the stock.

How Do You Know When The Cream Broth Is Smoky Enough?

I told you to take the smoked haddock out when the milk tastes smoky… but what does that mean? Trust me, you’re going to know if it’s too early to take the haddock out of the milk broth.

After 3 minutes of simmering with the fish, if it still tastes like milk then it’s too early to take the fish out. You’ll know the different between milk and smoky milk, trust me! One will have loads of layers of flavour, and the other will just be warm milk.

The flavour from the smoked fish really gets absorbed by the milk and it embodies the flavour – it’s delicious!

I’ve made this soup several times now, and it’s always different how long I have to keep the fish in. The first time, it was ready after boiling and then simmering for 3 minutes. But, I’ve had to leave it for anywhere from 5-10 minutes as well. The 3 minutes it just a starting point.

Why Remove The Fish When You Combine Both Soups?

It might seem like a useless step, but removing the fish from the milk broth is helpful in two ways.

First, it lets you check for bones when you break up the fish into smaller pieces. No one wants a nice sharp surprise in their creamy soup!

Second, once you add the fish to the soup you don’t really want to be mixing the soup around that much because you risk the fish breaking into too small of pieces and loosing the fish altogether. So you only want to add it once the soup is read and well combined. You still want nice chunks when you eat the soup!

To remove the fish, I use tongs, but you can also use a slotted spoon.

Saving The Soup For Later

If you have leftover soup, the best way to store it is to freeze the leftovers (for up to 3 months). To reheat the soup you want to avoid using the microwave. So the best way is to take it out of the freezer at least the night before you want to eat it and then reheat it on the stover.

You don’t want to reheat it in the microwave because this will change the texture of the fish (for the worse).

To reheat it on the stove, turn the stove to medium heat and let the soup slowly heat up. The soup tends to thicken, so you might have to add some more milk as well.

If there’s leftover soup at this point, the safest is to get rid of it. You don’t really want to be reheating the dairy and fish for a third time around.

Smoked Haddock Recipe

Want to smoke your own haddock? You can make it in one day, the whole process will take about 7 hours. You can make as much haddock that will fit on your smoker and freeze what you don’t use.

(If you’re making the soup with frozen haddock, just take it out at least the night before and keep it in your fridge to let it defrost).

Cure Haddock Fillets

This recipe is for 6 haddock fillets.

In a large baking dish, add 3 cups brown sugar, 1 cup kosher salt, and water. Stir mixture to combine. Add the filets skin side down, add more water to cover the fillets completely.

After 30 minutes, wash off the fish, dry them, and let them sit for 1 hour on the counter. This will create the pellicle.

How To Smoke Haddock

Place your fish fillets on your smoker once it’s preheated to 150 degrees. You want to keep the temperature at around 125 to 175 degrees. Smoke the fish for around 3 to 5 hours until the internal temperature is minimum 125 degrees.

If your fish fillets don’t have skin on the bottom, place parchment paper on your grill. Haddock is a lot thinner than smoking other fish like salmon and they will shrink even more during the smoking process. When it came time to taking them off the grill they were hard to pick up and handle without breaking them.

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Last update on 2024-04-29 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API