A versatile recipe made from just five ingredients

Hot smoked mackerel is a brilliant ingredient. Cheap, full of flavour, high in protein and healthy oils and incredibly versatile. This no-cook, simple recipe for a mackerel pate gives you something that can be used as a dip for a plate of cracker bread, a filling for a sandwich or wrap, something to be added to a salad or even stirred through pasta. Feel free to change or adapt this recipe depending on what ingredients are available. As a rule, I'd normally have put grated horseradish/horseradish sauce in for a kick of heat but this wasn't available, so I went with English Mustard instead and it worked just as well. 

Other additions might be capers/gherkins stirred in at the end, perhaps finely chopped chilli for a different kind of heat. You might like to add some finely chopped spring onions or chives for a little oniony bite. 

Whatever you do... make sure not to puree the whole mix or it won't have the texture you want from a pate of this kind.  

Follow the steps below, and a brilliant, smokey pate is all yours: 

1. You'll need a pack of smoked mackerel, 1 tub of cream cheese/mascarpone, a teaspoon of mustard/horseradish sauce, a lemon and some parsley.

2. Open you mackerel and break up half of it to keep back and stir through later. Zest your lemon and roughly chop some parsley. 

3. Add the other half of the mackerel, the cream cheese, mustard and half a lemon's juice to the blender and pulse until combined.

4. Stir in the mackerel, lemon zest and herbs - plus any other additional ingredients or flavourings you might want to add at this point. It is now ready to serve in one of the ways mentioned above.

Per Portion of pate
Calories: 221 kcal
Carbs: 2g
Fat: 18g
Protein: 13g
Fibre: 0g
Sugar: 2g

The lowest carb and lowest-calorie, serving suggestions we have are either a wrap (with salad) or our microwaved 2-minute flatbreads. Each would only add approx 70-80 kcal and 3g of carbs to this delicious pate per serving and yet would supply around 9g of fibre each.