At Yom Kippur, after fasting, it’s traditional to have a fish and dairy meal. At our traditional break fast – and at many others in America that serve Ashkenazi Jewish food – there are bagels and “lox.” A cream cheese-schmeared bagel topped with a healthy helping of thinly sliced salmon is a reward that helps me through those difficult late afternoon hours of fasting.
The buffet table is laden with other treats too: kugel, smoked whitefish salad, green salad, maybe some pickled herring or blintzes and sour cream, and always lots of choices for sweets. My favorite sweets are apple cake, poppy seed cake, rugelach, and babka. While no Jewish law requires that rugelach or babka contain chocolate inside, my personal legal system requires it. And for a healthy ending to the meal, there is always sliced fruit or a fruit salad.
But mostly my heart is set on that bagel, cream cheese (veggie or plain) and what-I-call-lox.
What makes for great lox? It depends who you ask. But what is for sure is that the fish now presented as lox is rarely that. Lox is salt-cured for months – not a few days – in a brine that contains salt and no other ingredients. It is not smoked (smoked salmon is often mischaracterized as lox) and it is not cured with sugar and other ingredients in addition to salt, as is gravlax.
What is the difference between Nova and lox? You might think that nova refers to the salmon caught in the Atlantic near Nova Scotia. That may well have been the original source for the term. But now, according to The Forward, one of my “go to” sources for reliable information on Jewish topics, Nova now refers to a type of smoking that is preferred by New York deli customers.
As you might expect, traditional lox is quite salty. The best lox is so thinly sliced that each piece is practically translucent. (A person who can really slice lox is a skilled artisan not a schlepper at a deli counter and should be treated with respect.) The least expensive cut when I was growing up was belly lox and it is both fatty and salty. Though the nutrition police may frown, bagel heaped with belly lox makes for one happy camper.
Don’t get me wrong. Gravlax and smoked salmon are delicious. But they aren’t real lox. I plead guilty to occasionally misusing the term lox. And in his guest post on curing your own salmon, my son Liam used The Kitchn’s recipe and followed that site in calling it lox. Still, it’s best to know what is really lox – and what isn’t.
Whether or not you celebrate the Jewish High Holy Days and no matter how your salmon gets on a bagel (salt-cured, salt and sugar-cured or smoked), I wish you a good year.
Judy says
Ruthie used to slice the lox at our favorite appetizing store in NJ. She was like a surgeon. Each piece was paper thin and spread out on waxy paper, and she carefully removed bones and skin. That's the gold standard in my family. While I serve Kirkland Smoked Salmon at our Break-the-Fast, it doesn't hold a candle to Ruthie's lox.
Analida's Ethnic Spoon says
I love the explanation of the various types of cured salmon and yes I love it too! My husband catches steelhead salmon near our home when they run up the streams in the fall/winter. We love this time of year! I have a gravax recipe on my site and my hubby with his catch!
Laura says
Analida, I saw your post – and especially love the pic of your hubby and his salmon.