During the live coverage of the State Visit of the British royals in May 2011, the Burren Smokehouse and our smoked salmon were mentioned when the correspondent listed the Irish produce that was to be served at the State Dinner. 

The whole evening of the State Dinner was televised live on RTE, our national TV station. While the correspondents waited for the cavalcade to appear in front of Dublin Castle, they talked about the food that was being served. They got as far as “Burren Smoked Salmon” and the second starter, when the first cars came into view and they excitedly dropped the subject.

The State Dinner took place on the 18th May 2011 at St. Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle which was filled to capacity with the 172 attending guests. The main guests were Queen Elizabeth II, her late husband, Prince Philip, and the then English Prime Minister David Cameron. They were joined by then President of Ireland, Mary McAleese and her husband. 

This was the first official visit of an English king or queen in the Republic of Ireland in a hundred years. It is an immensely important and welcomed step in the healing process between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

Great endorsement for our smoked salmon

Birgitta herself delivered the smoked salmon to the chefs in Dublin who had the honour to cook for the dinner during the State Visit.

Garrett Duff (on left) from With Taste, Dublin, and Ross Lewis (on right) from Chapter One, the award-winning restaurant in Dublin, were the wizards on duty. 

Bord Bía did a great job providing Irish top-class produce from about 15 counties for this dinner which highlighted the importance and the high level of quality of Ireland as a food producing country.

Birgitta: “It’s an absolute delight and outstanding compliment to have been selected to provide the smoked fish that was served at this pivotal state event.

This was the menu for what was probably the most memorable state dinner to ever be held in this country – to be selected to provide our Burren smoked salmon delicacies for Her Majesty brings amazing kudos and underlines our brand as being one of the country’s most esteemed and celebrated artisan food products.”

This is the first starter on the menu:

Cured salmon with Burren smoked salmon cream and lemon balm jelly, horseradish and wild watercress, Kilkenny organic cold pressed rapeseed oil […]

Roughly speaking, one can say that the rainbow trout is a freshwater fish, while the sea trout lives mainly in salt water.

The rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is a species of salmonid. It is native only to the rivers and lakes of North America, west of the Rocky Mountains, and of the tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia. Its value as a hard-fighting game and delicious fish, however, has led to its introduction in freshwater bodies around the world. 

The sea trout (Salmo trutta morpha trutta) shows anadromous reproduction, meaning it migrates to the oceans for much of its life and returns to freshwater only to spawn, like the salmon.

Sea trout in the UK and Ireland have many regional names including sewin (Wales), finnock (Scotland), mort (North West England) and white trout (Ireland).

Trout make for a very tasty meal, as simple and easy or as sophisticated as you like. It is rich in Omega-3 oils and low in calories, and contains vitamins A and D. So give our recipes – like this one – a try and taste it for yourself! 

Over ten years ago, in 2011, the Burren Ecotourism Network was formally launched. The Burren Smokehouse was one of the founder members.

In the last decade, the number of restaurants, food producers, activity and accommodation providers joining the Burren Ecotourism Network has more than tripled. All are committed to work sustainably and have as little negative impact on the environment as possible whilst giving their visitors the best possible experience.

2021 saw the launch of a new website to accommodate all the new members and to make the visit of the Burren a great one from the (virtual) start. Check it out and discover what the Burren has to offer – it is a lot!

Click here to go to the new website.

You will find the Burren Smokehouse here, and this is the new video that the Burren Ecotourism Network filmed for us:

 

It is very hard to believe that in times gone by, wild salmon was the food of the poor people. Not only here in Ireland, but also in London for example, where the servants of aristocratic households sighed when they had to eat wild salmon from the River Thames, again. Those times are long gone.

Today, Wild Irish Salmon is a rare delicacy. What changed in the meantime?

If we had to summarise it in just one word, it would be – overfishing.

Up until 2006, wild salmon in Ireland could be fished with big, long drift nets cast from trawlers off the Irish coasts.

When the salmon returned  after years of roaming the Atlantic, they came back to lay their own eggs in the exact same rivers where they hatched. Unfortunately, most of the salmon was caught by the big trawlers before they even made it into the estuaries of the rivers. Only a small number of eggs were laid, the population of wild salmon dwindled rapidly.

This worrying issue caused one, and accelerated another, development. One was the ban on drift net fishing which made sure that the wild salmon was actually able to return to the top of the rivers and reproduce.

The other one was the establishment of aquaculture as a means to sustainably produce salmon. Today, almost all salmon aquaculture in Ireland is organically farmed. The big cages in the open Atlantic waters are covered in nets so that no predators can get in and no salmon can escape.

 

After years of absolutely no wild salmon fishing in Irish waters, small outfits were allowed again in 2011 to fish salmon under strict conditions. One of them is that they have to fish in the rivers, with traditional methods like snapnet fishing. Also, fishing is only allowed during a few short months in summer from around May to August, and only on certain days of the week. Numbers are heavily restricted, and every legally caught salmon will have a tag with a registered number on it.

With the reduced number of available wild salmon, the demand is focusing on very few fish compared to what the quantities used to be. This of course results in an increase in prices.

The taste of Wild Smoked Salmon is another factor. Similar to wine, where we can sometimes taste the terroir, we can taste the “rivoir” in wild smoked salmon depending on what river the salmon was caught in.

 

A few years ago, we decided to switch from oil to gas to heat the building and the water. In 2018, we were asked by Calor if we wanted to take another step on our journey to become as environmentally friendly as possible, and we jumped at the opportunity.

The normal gas called LPG is already a low-carbon fuel compared to other fossil fuels, obtained from the extraction of natural gas and also from the refining of crude oil. In both processes LPG is considered a by-product.

BioLPG, however, will reduce carbon emissions even more, allowing energy-conscious businesses and consumers to reduce their carbon footprint further.

So what is BioLPG?

BioLPG is produced from waste, residues and renewable vegetable oils. It can be used in exactly the same way as normal LPG which is great news for everybody using gas!

Here a video explaining what BioLPG is.

Some BioLPG Facts:

• Made from 100% renewable sources (waste!)
• Reduces carbon footprint
• Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80%

Small decisions, big changes

It is all about the small decisions we make in life… be it accepting an invitation for a drink or switching to a natural and sustainable gas. Calor have produced this short video in which Birgitta tells her story – how a little decision made during her holidays in Ireland had a great impact on the rest of her life.

Have you ever tried our delicious hot smoked mackerel as a way of keeping a healthy diet?

Mackerel is one of the most health-beneficial kinds of fish you can eat – it contains lots of omega-3 fatty acids of which we can never consume enough.

Mackerel is a common name applied to a number of different species of fish. They occur in all tropical and temperate seas. The Atlantic Mackerel (Scomber scombrus) is by far the most common of the ten species of the family that are caught in British and Irish waters.

In contrast to salmon and trout, mackerel is a species that cannot be farmed, so all mackerel you buy was caught in the wild. They can reach the mature age of 20 years.

Usually mackerel swim in large schoals of several thousands. It is not known if the shoals hold together all the time, but fishermen tend to think so. The members of a shoal are usually of the same size.

We hot smoke our mackerel and offer a plain and a spiced version. Both are delicious when briefly put on a barbecue, or in salads and other dishes. Find recipes our recipe section.

Wine seems to be a very complicated matter to most of us. And when it comes to pairing wine and food, it appears to become even more complicated and mysterious. But fear not – there are a few simple ways of choosing the right wine for smoked salmon, and failing that – just blame your sense of adventure!

Trying out and experimenting is a great way of finding the right wines for your dinners, or just ask the staff in your trusted wine shop. Where smoked salmon is concerned, it is neither red nor white meat, making it an exceptionally accommodating wine companion.

Having said that, it always depends on the way you eat the salmon – do you use lemon, a white sauce, horseradish or capers with it? This would of course change the taste of the meal, and hence the relationship between the smoked salmon, the wine and your taste buds.

As a rule of thumb, we can say that the texture and “weight” of the food should be similar to the texture and “weight” of the wine. A light fish like sole would go best with light wines like a Pinot Grigio from Italy, and heavier fish like salmon would love to swim in richer, fuller-bodied wines like an un-oaked Chardonnay.

The majority of wines that are suitable to drink with smoked salmon are white. An exception would be the light, red Beaujolais from the Burgundy region in France. We are talking about a generic Beaujolais, not a Cru du Beaujolais which would have a more complex body. Wines from the Beaujolais area are low in tannins, light and reasonably fruity.

The white wines to look out for when choosing one to go with smoked salmon would be dry with a balanced acidity, as they would bring a refreshing taste to the table (every pun intended).

Here are some examples for suitable wines:

• Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine (France)
• a dry Riesling (from Alsace or Germany)
• a Gewürztraminer from Alsace (France)
• wines from the Italian wine-growing region of Gavi
• Bollinger Champagne (France), and
• Chablis (France).

Here a list of what not to drink with smoked salmon:

• sweet wines
• oaky/woody wines that were aged in barrels or exposed to wood chips if New World wines
• (red) wines with too many tannins which would make fish taste unpleasantly metallic
• Very fruity wines are not the best choice either. They don’t clash with the taste of smoked salmon but they don’t add to the experience either.

So go out and experiment – and enjoy the journey of discovery! A little tip: take notes of which wines are good with what kinds of meals for future reference.

… Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II!

If it is good enough for the Queen, it is good enough for us!

This is a most precious quote by Diane Stopford, at the time buyer at Dean & Deluca in New York, when she was asked on TV3’s “Morning Show” in 2012 if Dean & Deluca carried Irish food products.

The quote refers to the State Dinner in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s historic visit to Ireland in May 2011.

And this is the fantastic story behind this quote.

As you might know, we have not smoked any wild salmon since 2006 when a drift net fishing ban was introduced to Irish waters. For the salmon season of 2011, the strict fishing ban was lifted for small outfits fishing in rivers only in order to maintain a healthy level of salmon in the breeding grounds. Read more here about wild salmon fishing.

One afternoon in May 2011, Birgitta got a phone call from Ross Lewis, the co-owner and head chef of the Michelin starred Chapter One Restaurant in Dublin at the time. He and Garrett Duff from With Taste were going to cook for a Very Important Person which he could not reveal the name of, and asked if we had wild salmon available.

We had not. Up to then, Birgitta had not given much thought to buying wild salmon.

A few minutes later, she got a phone call from a fishery outfit in County Waterford who were fishing in the Blackwater River offering us wild salmon.

They had four full salmon for us which we smoked – on their own – in the big kiln which has a capacity of 250 sides. Birgitta then took the eight fillets as they were and brought them to Dublin herself. The picture shows Birgitta with Garrett Duff from With Taste (on left) and Ross Lewis from Chapter One.

After she dropped off as many sides of the wild salmon that were needed there, she got a phone call from craft butchers Nolan’s of Kilcullen just outside Dublin asking if she had wild salmon, they would need it for a lunch for a Very Important Person. So, on her way back to Lisdoonvarna, she made a little detour and hand-delivered the remaining sides of salmon to Nolan’s.

As we know now, it was Queen Elizabeth II who everybody was cooking for. But it is a little-known fact that she ate our Burren smoked Wild Irish Salmon twice during her historic visit to Ireland: once at the State Dinner on 18 May 2011 at Dublin Castle with over 170 guests, and then again a day later for lunch in Kilcullen.

Our home town of Lisdoonvarna is a quaint town with many beautiful pubs and some high-end restaurants. It is known of course for being an old spa town which was founded around health-beneficial mineral sources.

It is also known for the Matchmaking festival which takes place every year in September. It evolved from the farmers when they traveled to Lisdoonvarna to “take the waters” after harvest time to compensate for the heavy diet over the year. Another reason for coming to Lisdoonvarna was the prospect of meeting members of the opposite sex.

Lisdoonvarna is only a few minutes’ drive off the Wild Atlantic Way, the world’s longest driving route along the Atlantic coast. It is well worth the detour for the Spa Wells Garden, the Community Park with its Twin Wells, the pub scene and live music. It also features a wonderful playground.

And of course you can follow our mini food trail – taste the Burren Smoked Irish Organic Salmon at the Burren Smokehouse, follow the King of Fish through history in the “Taste the Atlantic – Salmon Experience”, enjoy great pints of craft beers from the Burren Brewery, have a pizza in the Burren Storehouse and listen to traditional music in the quaint Roadside Tavern (estd. 1865). Not just for foodies!

Find out more on our dedicated mini food trail website.

Lisdoonvarna is located on the newly launched Burren Discovery Trail which loops from Ardrahan or Kinvara through Gort, Corofin, Kilfenora, Ennistymon, Lisdoonvarna and back to the Wild Atlantic Way in Ballyvaughan.

«God created seaweed… The seaweed made the world.»
John B. Keane

There are so many fantastic properties that can be attributed to seaweed that we will not be able to mention them all here. On this page you will discover the main ones.

As we all know, life began in the sea. Sea water is very mineral-rich, and therefore algae absorb plenty of mineral elements, vitamins and trace elements. The mineral content of some seaweeds account for up to 80% of their dry matter. But it gets better: some brown seaweed like Ascophyllum nodosum (also called Knotted Wrack) or Fucus vesiculosus (commonly called Bladder Wrack) contain every single mineral there is on the planet!

Benefits of seaweed

The vitamins, minerals and all other good natural chemicals that are part of seaweed have numerous health benefits for us humans – and none of the huge side effects that pharmaceutical medicine can have.

The oils in seaweed have long been known to recuperate from illness by detoxifying the body and helping the renewal of damaged skin cells.

Seaweed contains algal carotenoids and polyphenols which have been proven to be powerful antioxidants. Antioxidants help the body fight against oxygen-free radicals which damage cells and are the cause of aging and disease.

The iodine prevalent in seaweed is essential for the thyroid gland to regulate the body’s metabolism.

The benefits for the skin comprise an improvement of the suppleness and the elasticity of the skin. Seaweed acts as an anti-ageing and anti-cellulite agent. It detoxifies, tones and cleanses the skin. It can stimulate the renewal of damaged skin cells. It moisturises and smoothes the skin.

Seaweed has been used as an effective external treatment for conditions like psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis and acne.

In short we can say that algae is very health-beneficial. It can be taken for internal and external treatments of the body. The good thing is that it is pure goodness without the nasty bits, and that no animals suffer in lab tests.

Seaweed has many uses: you can eat it dried (in salads and hot dishes), or take it as a health supplement in the shape of capsules, or use it in cosmetics like creams, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, massage oils…

We sprinkle on our Burren Cold Smoked Irish Organic Salmon with Seaweed a mixture of the good stuff that the Talty family – Wild Irish Seaweed – in County Clare gather for us.

If you want inspiration for healthy and delicious meals, turn to Prannie Rhatigan’s website and fabulous cookbook which contains a lot of information on, and recipes with, seaweed.