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Smoked Salmon Rice Cakes with Avocado Cottage Cheese and Dill

Crunchy rice cakes spread with avocado mashed into cottage cheese, topped with smoked salmon and fresh dill. A high-protein snack for after a workout, ready in 5 minutes.

Snack

5

Serves 1

A plain rice cake spread with a thick layer of green avocado mash and topped with folded slices of smoked salmon and a sprig of dill on a wooden surface

Ingredients

  • 2 plain rice cakes (about 8g each), labelled gluten-free if you need it
  • 50g/1¾oz cottage cheese
  • ½ small ripe avocado (about 50g/1¾oz flesh)
  • 1 tsp (5ml) lemon juice
  • 50g/1¾oz smoked salmon
  • A few sprigs of dill (about 2g) and a pinch of black pepper

Method

  1. Mash the avocado with the cottage cheese and lemon juice in a small bowl with a fork, leaving it slightly chunky. Season with pepper; there is no need for salt, as the salmon is salty.
  2. Spread the mixture thickly over the rice cakes.
  3. Top with the smoked salmon and dill and eat straight away, before the rice cakes soften. Keep the stone in the other half of the avocado, brush the cut side with lemon juice, wrap it and keep in the fridge; use within a day.

Why it works

This snack gives you about 19g of protein for 278 calories, from the smoked salmon and cottage cheese. Around 20g of protein after exercise is a commonly recommended amount to support muscle repair.

Avocado meets cottage cheese. Mashing avocado into cottage cheese gives a creamy, green spread with more protein than avocado alone.

Why it is tagged for blood sugar. Plain rice cakes on their own raise blood sugar quickly, but here the 15g of carbohydrate comes with plenty of protein and healthy fat, which slow how quickly it is absorbed.

Eat it straight away. Rice cakes soften within minutes under a moist topping, so assemble them just before eating.

Contains fish and milk. Free from gluten if your rice cakes are labelled gluten-free. Smoked salmon is salty, so no salt is added. If you are pregnant, the NHS says cold-smoked fish like smoked salmon must be cooked until steaming hot, so this snack is not suitable in pregnancy as written. For a breakfast with the same flavours, try the smoked salmon, egg and avocado wrap.