Smoked Mackerel Appetizers & Coastal Roots

SMOKED MACKEREL APPETIZERS FOR YOUR HOLIDAY TABLE

As a Cape Cod daughter, I love smoked fish. Most folks gravitate towards smoked bluefish, but I prefer smoked mackerel. Its Cape Cod roots are as deep as mine. [ Read more about the coastal roots of mackerel after the recipes]

My holidays always include a spread of local-caught seafood. Traditions like sweet bay scallops wrapped in bacon and rich, smoky mackerel that brings the taste of our waters right to the table. Whether you’re hosting a crowd or sharing a quiet meal with family, these flavors anchor us to the coast and the season. Here are a few of my favorite smoked mackerel appetizers that will make your Cape Cod holiday meal complete.

Smoked Mackerel Appetizers

1. Smoked Mackerel Pâté on Toast Points

A classic. Blend smoked mackerel with cream cheese or crème fraîche, lemon zest, Dijon, and chives. Spread lemon butter on toast points,  top with microgreens or thin-sliced radish. Or skip blending the fish with creme fraiche and simply layer it on the toast. 

2. Smoked Mackerel Dip with Cape Cod Cranberries

Flake smoked mackerel and mix with sour cream, chopped herbs, lemon, and a spoonful of cranberry relish for a local twist. Serve with kettle chips or rye crisps.

3. Smoked Mackerel & Pickled Cucumber Crostini

Layer pickled cucumbers (or onions) over toasted bread, add a flake of smoked mackerel, and finish with fresh dill and a squeeze of lemon.

4. Mackerel Deviled Eggs

Fold minced smoked mackerel into the yolk filling with a little mustard, mayo, chives, and smoked paprika. Unexpected and superb.

5. Smoked Mackerel Spread with Horseradish & Apple

Blend together the smoked mackerel, grated apple, horseradish, lemon juice, and sour cream.Serve with pumpernickel or thin rye bread for an old-school New England flavor.

6. Cape Cod Smoked Mackerel Fishcakes

Mini fishcakes made from smoked mackerel, mashed potato, scallions, and herbs.Pan-fried and served with lemon aioli, party-friendly and hearty.

7. Smoked Mackerel on Potato Rounds

Top roasted baby potato slices with a dollop of sour cream, smoked mackerel flakes, and chives.Warm, salty, perfect with cocktails.

8. Smoked Mackerel Lettuce Cups

Use small crisp lettuce leaves filled with mackerel, cucumber, a little mayo or yogurt, and lemon zest. Light, fresh, and easy.

9. Smoked Mackerel Rillettes

Shred smoked mackerel and fold with soft butter, cracked pepper, mustard, and lemon.Chill and serve as a spread with baguette rounds

COASTAL ROOTS

Along the elbow of Cape Cod that is my home, my heritage,  tides churn through narrow channels and fish follow the same coastal routes they’ve traveled for centuries. There’s a quiet but powerful tradition that once shaped every spring: the weir fishery. For generations, wooden traps set just offshore of Cape Cod intercepting migrating fish. The most famous, the fast-moving, silver-bright schools of Atlantic mackerel. 

And no family is woven more tightly into that story than my own, the Nickersons and my husband’s, the Eldredges, whose work centered around a place locals still call the Trap Dock in Stage Harbor. and the waters of Nantucket Sound.

Long before Europeans ever sailed into these waters, Indigenous people used fixed traps to catch fish moving along the shoreline. As settlers arrived, they borrowed and expanded on these methods, building wooden structures of stakes, netting, and hearts designed to gently steer fish into a pound where they could be removed alive.

By the mid-1800s, these “weirs”, also called pound nets or fish traps, had become a signature of Cape Cod’s inshore fishery. And in those days, mackerel were the stars of the show.

When that first big push of mackerel hit the beaches each spring, the weirs often caught them before anyone else even knew they were in. Offshore schooners kept a close eye on the trap fishermen; the traps were the first reliable sign that the run had begun.

Weir-caught mackerel were prized. Because the fish were alive until the moment they were brailed into the boat, they came to the Trap Dock for packing firm and bright, unbruised and glistening, blue-silver, fetching premium prices in Boston and New York, and coveted by locals who preferred to salt or smoke the fish. 

From the mid-19th century through the early 20th, countless barrels of mackerel moved through Cape Cod’s weirs, with Chatham among the most productive ports on the entire coast.

Chatham has always been uniquely suited for weir fishing. Migrating fish sweep around Monomoy, and spill into Nantucket Sound. The tides are strong, the currents predictable, and fish follow these underwater highways year after year.

For decades, those waters supported some of the best weirs on the Cape. And standing at the center of that long tradition was my family.

The Nickersons and Eldredges are one of Chatham’s oldest seafaring families, and their roots in the weir fishery go back more than a century. Season after season, they built and repaired gear, drove weir poles into the bottom each spring, and brailed hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish like mackerel, menhaden, scup, butterfish, squid, and more.

But it was the mackerel that defined the rhythm of the work. When a big body of macs filled the weirs overnight, the whole town seemed to pulse with excitement. Boats hurried out before dawn. Barrels stacked up on the Trap Dock. And the word was “The macs are in Chatham.”

Now, instead of entering the inshore traps the way they once did, they’re more often found further offshore, where our small-boat fishermen catch them on hook and line or in carefully tended gill nets. It’s a different rhythm, a different gear type, and a different relationship, but it’s still rooted in the same knowledge of tides, seasons, and migration that guided fishermen before us.

The fishery evolves, as it always has. But the spirit of it, the deep respect for the sea, the connection to place, the reliance on community remains steady. It’s the thread that ties the old mackerel traps of Chatham to the day-boat fishermen working offshore today, and it’s what continues to define us as a coastal people shaped by the water and the life it carries.

So today, when “The macs are in Chatham,” it’s time to enjoy smoked mackerel.

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Shareen Davis:

Shareen Davis is the Marketing and Sales Manager and creates the recipe blog for Chatham Harvesters Cooperative. A true seafood enthusiast with deep, generational roots in Chatham’s fishing community, she blends her love of local flavors with her passion for sharing the stories behind the catch.