How Finns make lohikeitto: salmon, potato, onion, allspice and dill, usually with cream. Plus a clear version, a fish stock and where to eat it in Lapland.
Salmon, potato, allspice and dill, finished with cream or butter: the creamy recipe, the clear one, the stock and where Lapland serves it.
Lohikeitto,: Lohikeitto is the soup Finns cook at home and order for lunch: salmon, potato, onion, allspice and dill, usually finished with cream. Here are three recipes, what it costs on Lapland menus, and the two salmon rivers on Lapland's borders, where wild salmon are now protected.
The name says it all: lohi is salmon and keitto is soup. The pot holds salmon, potato and onion, the seasoning is allspice and dill, and on Lapland's restaurant menus the soup is almost always creamy. In Rovaniemi, Ylläs and Ruka a bowl costs 12 to 19.80 euros.
Salmon goes in last: The potatoes cook first. The salmon goes in when they are nearly done and is cooked through in a few minutes on a low heat. A hard boil breaks the fish apart.
Cream or butter: Restaurants usually serve the creamy version. In the clear one the stock is made from the salmon's head and bones, and the soup is finished with butter instead of cream.
Bread alongside: Rye bread and butter go with it. Lapland restaurants also serve it with rieska flatbread, malt bread or the dark sweet archipelago loaf.
Lohikeitto, the home way. Three recipes: the creamy soup most Finns know, a clear version finished with butter, and the stock that makes both of them fuller.
Creamy lohikeitto: Salmon, potato and onion in a light stock, finished with cream, butter and plenty of dill.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes of about 2 cm. Peel and chop the onion and slice the carrot.
Bring the water or stock to the boil and add the potatoes, onion, carrot, allspice, bay leaf and salt. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the potatoes are nearly cooked.
Cut the salmon into 2 to 3 cm cubes and pick out any bones.
Pour in the cream and bring the soup back to a simmer. Add the salmon and cook on a low heat for 5 to 8 minutes, until it is just cooked. Do not let the soup boil hard.
Lift out the bay leaf, stir in the butter and dill, and check the salt.
Stock made from the salmon's head and bones gives a fuller soup than water. The recipe is the third one on this page.
Clear lohikeitto with butter: No cream: salmon and potato in a clear fish stock, finished with butter and herbs.
Make the stock first, or warm a stock you made earlier.
Add the cubed potatoes, the chopped onion and the allspice to the hot stock and simmer for about 15 minutes.
Add the salmon in cubes and cook on a low heat for 5 to 8 minutes.
Take the pot off the heat, stir in the butter and season with salt. Scatter dill or chives on top.
The clear soup works just as well with whitefish or trout. Use the same amounts and the same cooking times.
Fish stock from salmon head and bones: The base for both soups. It uses the parts of the fish that are usually thrown away.
1 salmon head and the bones, about 500–700 g
Rinse the head and bones in cold water and cut out the gills.
Put the fish in a pot, cover with the cold water and bring slowly to the boil. Skim off the foam.
Add the onion and carrot in pieces, the allspice, bay leaf, dill stalks and salt.
Simmer gently without a lid for 30 minutes, then strain the stock through a fine sieve.
Cut out the gills before cooking, because they make the stock bitter. Stock keeps in the freezer, so you can make enough for several soups at once.
Lapland's two salmon rivers. Lohikeitto is salmon cooked with potato and onion, seasoned with allspice and dill and usually finished with cream or milk. Of the six Lapland menus we checked, four describe their soup as creamy, and only one says where its salmon comes from: at Roka in Rovaniemi, the stock is made from salmon caught by the kitchen's own Toni.
Two salmon rivers run along Lapland's borders. The Tornionjoki, the border river with Sweden, is a spawning river for Baltic salmon. The counters that the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) keeps at Kattilakoski recorded about 45,000 salmon going upriver in summer 2025, against about 100,000 in the best years, 2014, 2016 and 2021. In summer 2026 one angler may keep at most two salmon from the river.