Smoked Salmon Dip

I found this recipe on Spoonful through Pinterest and made it for Thanksgiving. I changed a few things when I made it: adding fresh chopped dill and some Old Bay seasoning, removing the shredded carrots (why carrots??), increasing the cream cheese and adding white wine when I cooked the salmon instead of chicken stock. The one thing I left the same turned out to be it's undoing. It turned out WAY too lemony. The 1 tsp lemon zest completely overpowered the nice smoked salmon and every other flavor I added in fact.

The recipe version I made (I changed things too much to really criticize the original recipe) just doesn't highlight the salmon-which is the focus. Additionally it should be noted that brick cream cheese is too solid when cold for this to be served chilled. It was a cracker massacre! At the end I've included a recipe with additional changes that I've since tried and found delish but the photos are from the failed version (thus the lemon).

Cooked salmon, shredded and set aside.

When zesting a lemon, just barely get the top of the peel. You don't want any pith. Remember that lemon zest is very powerful in flavor, more so than the juice...

Mixing the spices in. I cut the dill with kitchen scissors, it was very effective!

An entire 4oz package of smoked salmon. I suggest you don't go for the fanciest one since it's in a dip.

Roughly chopped smoked salmon.

At this point I tasted the dip and found it way too lemony and not very savory. I added this imitation Old Bay to try and rescue it. I added dash by dash (it's very salty).

Here it is finished, looking very pretty. I didn't have time to redo it before Thanksgiving so I took it with me. People generally agreed it was very lemony (while trying to be polite) and it didn't get finished.

Below, my version. Add Old Bay in dashes to taste since it's a powerful spice mixture.