EZ Salmon Recipe by the Numbers

Step One: Go to Alaska


Step Two: Catch your salmon (this one's a Humpie--can you see why they call it that?)



Steps three, four, and five might be: Clean your fish, freeze your fish, and smoke your fish, but this is getting out of hand, so I'm going to skip to the recipe...

Okay, here's the scoop...

I basically marinate my salmon with a salt/brown sugar/water mixture. Then I cook the fish in the oven (375 - 400 degrees) and that's it. I can be done. Serve it with rice or steamed veggies or whatever. It's good. But what's even better is to make tortilla wraps with it, using rice as a filler. This is a straightforward process that's pretty easy. But for me, it takes about three days of planning because I thaw the fish in the fridge (day one), cook the fish (day two), then put the fish back in the fridge for a day to lock in the flavor (day three) before eating.

I usually prepare about a pound of fish at at time with this recipe. If you figure 1/4 pound per serving, that's about four servings. I usually fillet my own fish and freeze the fish, storing it in one pound or half pound sizes. The nice thing about freezing the fish is that the freezing process will--or some I'm told--kill any kind of critters that might be living on or in the fish that might harm us. I've also eaten the fish I've caught right away and that's nice too. So far so good. ;-)

So I thaw my pound of fish in the fridge the day before. In the summer, I smoke my own fish once it's thawed, but in the winter, with tons of snow in the yard, that's not something I try. Instead I use Wright's All Natural Hickory Seasoning Liquid Smoke. Now I have to take a detour for a second.

If you follow that link, you'll see that Wright's is a product from the B & G folks. These are the same folks I talked about in my Cream of Rice post below. Interesting. Like I said, these folks make all manner of stuff we use all the time, but most of us have never heard of them. Anyway...

Getting back to the liquid smoke, a couple of warnings are in order. For starters, I'm just beginning to figure out this liquid smoke stuff, so I'm experimenting with the quantity. It takes very, very little. Seriously. The cap on the bottle is about the size of a woman's pinky finger. I use about half a cap. We're talking just a few drops. And this stuff is runnier than water. It's like anti-viscous. And it stinks! Use the stuff as required, then put the lid back on right away or your house will smell like smoke right away.

All right, so how do I use the liquid smoke and all the rest? Well first, I get a gallon sized Ziploc bag. I put the following ingredients in the bag:

Brown sugar 1/2 cup
Coarse sea salt between 3 tsp and 1/8 cup
Water 1/8 cup
Liq smoke 1/2 capful

If you use regular salt or something that's not coarse, you'll need to use a lot less salt. If you're a smoker, you'll probably use closer to 1/8 cup of the coarse sea salt. If you're not big on salt, you'll use about half (Google tells me 1/16 cup is about three teaspoons) of your 1/8 cup. I use something in between. You can always add more salt later, so err accordingly.

Once you put all that stuff in the bag, you can sort of slosh it around to mix it all together. It will seem like there's not enough, but it seems to work with a big ole slab of fish. And speaking of which, the next step is to put your fish in the bag.

You're basically going to marinate both sides of the fish in the ingredients for about half an hour per side in the frig. Once that's done, put the fish in your pre-heated oven (depending on thickness, I've had good luck with 375 to 400 degrees F) and cook until it flakes. It's probably going to take about fifteen minutes.

Now here's the weird part. While you can eat the fish right away (I have and I like it), I actually like to crumble the fish, removing all the bones I might've missed, and put it into a glass bowl which will go (covered) into the fridge. I let it sort of setup overnight. It seems to lock in the flavor and tastes a little gooier. I don't know a better term right now. I just like it better after it's been in the fridge overnight.

The next day I like to make salmon tortillas with wasabi paste and mayonnaise. The problem in preparing this is that I tend to eat the salmon while I'm fixing the tortillas, so I'm stuffing my face when I'm supposed to be preparing the food. At any rate, what we do is we put some mayo in a bowl, then add the wasabi to taste. We mix that up real well. Then take your tortilla shell and put it on a skillet (no oil required) and just heat it up a bit. When your tortilla is warmed, put your wasabi and mayo on the shell and then add the salmon (and if you have it, rice). Fold the tortilla and feast.

I'm weeping as I think about it. It's so good.

That's for you, Mom!