I’m not a big fish fan but DH definitely is. Not different but we usually grill salmon that works best for me. Ina G’s Asian Grilled Salmon tasty marinade is one we like. Easy to tweak depending on the amount needed.

Asian Grilled Salmon

ETA - I marinate the salmon for 2-3 hours. No problem.

My favorite way to eat salmon is as sashimi. Otherwise, I’ll usually cook it very briefly in a pan with butter and herbs or with teriyaki sauce, while SWMBO likes to smother her with sauce and oven bake. I like making salmon mousse, and crisp frying salmon skin. It is quite a versatile fish, as fish go.

Nicole, I'm pretty sure you can't make tilapia out of salmon, but it sure would be different...

:D

LOL

Lucky here to get fresh salmon almost year round and I cook it nearly once every week. I prefer King and right now we're getting Alaskan Winter King (yum!). I never marinate or sauce it, because it's so delicious bare naked.

I don't remember where I first saw this method for cooking it, but I never cook it any other way now: Fillets about 3/4" -1" thick, a light coating of olive oil brushed over the top (I don't usually salt it). Place it on a shallow baking dish or cookie sheet, into a cold oven. Turn on the oven to 400° and cook for approx 20 min - depending on how well done you prefer it. It doesn't matter how large the filet is, just the thickness. I've cooked whole salmon halves (is that an oxymoron?) and smaller ½ lb fillets using this method and timing.

If the salmon is good it doesn't need much. I usually bake it on a bed of mixed vegetables. The sauce is just the salmon and vegetable juices and olive oil.

Smoked salmon is expensive.

Making your own cold smoked salmon is easy, and healthier because you can get salmon that is not anti biotic treated and you don't have to treat it with chemical preservitives.

You can also vary the smoke flavor, and use spices that you like.

You can hot smoke any fish.

dcarch

We like it grilled on the grill pan. It's pretty forgiving, and hard to mess up too badly. Lightly seasoned and often served with cottage cheese, veg and white wine.

in an oven dish, sprinkled with lemon juice, salt and pepper, herbs and lots of butter. Baked carefully so not overdone. Served with new potatoes. Yum.

Or pan-fried served with a cucumber sauce.

Or in a fishcake

Or with a soy and ginger glaze, grilled as brochettes.

I either bake with butter, olive oil and TJ's 21 Seasoning with some tarragon added, and salt, or I pan fry in butter and olive oil, coated with cornmeal seasoned with the same things. I never put lemon on fish - especially salmon.

I have also baked the whole sides on a bed of herbs and aromatic veggies, then served with a sour cream & dill sauce.

Grilled, on a bed of fresh greens, with purple onion, Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, avocado and crumbled feta cheese. Topped with a vinagrette dressing.

Always grilled on a cedar plank. Sometimes I marinade with Dijon mustard and brown sugar or just season with lemon pepper and garlic powder.

I love good sashimi salmon. I quite like smoked salmon. I intensely dislike cooked salmon.

My old, she moved, neighbor had a catering business.....and loved to go to Alaska for the salmon run. She brought salmon back in those styrofoam coolers. She had us over to her NEW place...down sized....and served smoked salmon dip we put on Ritz crackers. She said it was her crab dip recipe with mayo/celery/red bell peppers....just with salmon. It was delicious!

I think salmon is one of those things for which less is more.

I put a foil-lined baking pan in the oven while it's preheating (so that the skin sticks to the hot pan). When 425° is reached, I take out the pan, put salmon filets skin side down (tops salted while waiting), and return the pan to the oven. Done in 10-12 minutes. We don't like it rare in the middle so I try to cook it through while leaving it juicy.

If browning on top is desired (as with Nicole's yummy photo), I suspect that turning on the broiler at about the 7-8 minute mark would do that.

Most fish is fast food as far as I'm concerned. We go with simple preparations.

We eat a lot of smoked salmon too, the packaged kind and not the hunk kind.

As for dcarchs' comment above, smoked salmon made from wild salmon (easily found at Costco) is not treated with antibiotics or anything else. Unless someone is dosing wide-open Alaskan ocean waters.

Just found a pic of my usual concoction. The scallops were just an additional treat that night.

Elmer J Fudd , "---- As for dcarchs' comment above, smoked salmon made from wild salmon (easily found at Costco) is not treated with antibiotics or anything else. Unless someone is dosing wide-open Alaskan ocean waters. ----"

I do not use wild caught salmon to make cold smoked salmon. I use farm raised salmon because from a reliable supply source, there is a lot less chance for parasites.

dcarch

Don't they freeze the salmon first, like the other sushi fish? To kill the parasites/eggs?

Oooooh.....Sherry....My mom made those for us when I was a kid! My mom put mashed potatoes in them. That brings back some memories..🎶 LOVE salmon patties...she called them....with tartar sauce. I forgot ALL about those. On my list now...a can of sockeye salmon... I have the rest of the ingredients on hand. Yum!

BTW...I'm from Texas....are those a Texas thang?

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK...is that zucchini under the salmon? Looks so pretty!

No. We are Alabama. I can buy frozen red sockeye sometimes. Fresh red sockeye in July? August? at an outrageous price. The only other ”salmon” is farmed Atlantic and I do not trust it.

No, it's cucumber. I just use whatever vegetables I have.

They had a nice sale on THIS...decided to try it...remember...I'm in Colorado. There is NO fresh fish unless it's lake caught. Everything is frozen.

The mention of canned reminded me of the salmon mold my mother made for funeral lunches. People loved it, and it's parve (neither dairy nor meat).

@plllog...Never heard of parve or pareve....googled it:

Common Parve Foods:

• Vegetables: Broccoli, potatoes, onions.
• Fruits: Apples, bananas, berries.
• Fish: Salmon, tuna (non-creamed).
• Grains/Other: Rice, pasta, nuts, eggs, coffee, olive oil

Neither dairy nor meat is the deal. The bold settings in your post are true. The specifics are misleading because all plant products and scaly fish (the kosher ones) are parve. Dairy is defined as any milk product. Meat is defined as mammal or bird. Fish is parve (said PAR-vuh). Scaly fin fish are kosher (not smooth skinned or bottom feeders). So are a few kinds of locusts. Other proteins are either meat or not kosher. There are timings for what someone keeping kosher can eat at what time following what has gone before, so having a parve spread no one has to ask what it is vis-a-vis what they can eat. Plus, there are far fewer laws about how the parve food is handled so it's mostly kosher enough no matter who made it how.

But my mother's canned salmon mold was well liked.

I used to be a live in nanny for a Jewish family who sent their children to a Jewish run school. (More for a cultural thing as they weren't particularly observant.) The littlest one came home in tears as the teacher supervising the lunch room tore strips off her for bringing a chicken sandwich to school (they could only bring dairy or pareve foods). It was tuna! That woman must have had no sense of smell..grrr.

Talking about whole smoked salmon reminds me of a New Year's glamping trip we went on with friends for a long weekend about, oh, 25 years ago. We had a bunch of old loggers' cottages in the middle of the forest, no electricity but gas stoves in the cottages and several communal barbecues in the middle of the open area the cottages were grouped around. One of the ladies had been gifted a large side of cold smoked salmon so she brought it along and we spent the weekend cutting slivers off it to have on toast, or whatever else people had brought.

I think my favorite is pan-seared, start with skin side down on high heat and when it releases flip it over for a minute or so - I looove the skin when it's cooked crispy like that and it's quick and fun.

We also grill it quite often, which is classic - but have been experimenting with more gentle cooking like poached, or add it to a thai curry at the end or other gentle fish stews. It's just hard to go wrong unless it's overcooked !

My dh loves it very rare but I've been asking for mine to be more like 140 F , due to my increasingly paranoid parasite concerns ... in my town, by law, our Sushi is frozen for 32 hours or something like that so I feel safe eating it and love it - although I wonder how it ipacts flavor, tastes great to me.

Olychick, I love that troll-caught King salmon , wonderful - and sometimes it's white, which is unique.

While our Alaskan waters sound pretty pristine, we have had occurrences of microplastics being found in our marine ecosystem , it's everywhere :((

The story goes that P.T. Barnum was told about a canned fish company who didn't know how what to do with a whole catch of white salmon (color depends on what they eat). His solution: Genuine White Salmon. Guaranteed not to go pink in the can. :D

This reminded me of something I learned awhile back - that salmon naturally has these white worms that are harmless, but kind of gross.

And after reading the linked article, I now know that they're in other fresh fish as well, but aren't so easy to spot because of their color 😝

https://www.brit.co/white-worms-in-salmon/

plllog :"Don't they freeze the salmon first, like the other sushi fish? To kill the parasites/eggs? "

Yes, it is very safe to eat wild caught salmon, but there is NO official legal definition or government regulation for "sashimi-grade" or "sushi-grade" fish in the U.S.. It is primarily a marketing term used by sellers to indicate that the fish is high-quality, very fresh.

A farm raised salmon starts from a single fish egg, raised in a controlled environment, then goes through the freezing process also. I feel that is safer from other little parasites . Still, I freeze the salmon for more than two weeks before cold smoking.

dcarch

We are lucky to have a nice supply of wild caught (by our son in Alaska) red salmon, AKA Sockeye salmon. One of our favorite ways to cook salmon: glaze generously with sweet chili sauce and bake in the oven. Careful to not over cook! Round out dinner with a green salad and some brown rice. Delicious, quick and easy!

I pan fry it in butter. Occasionally put it in pasta with a cream-based sauce.

I much prefer trout, though. It's salmon's milder cousin. MI has some of the best trout fishing streams in the world. DH will put a whole trout on the grill. I generously butter inside and out, stuff a few fresh scallions in the cavity, wrap both sides with a strip of bacon, tie it all up and then DH takes over (so I can't tell you how long to grill it). Simple and delicious.

Indigenous/PNW alder smoked is my favorite, with grilled a close second.

I'm fortunate to have a nephew that loves to fish and will trade Lake Michigan salmon for grassfed beef or homegrown chicken or homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Elery will occasionally smoke salmon but usually that process is reserved for Lake Trout, which is stronger and smoked is the only way I'll eat that particular species.

I like it brushed with local maple syrup and grilled but I did deep fry some a few weeks ago because we had some prepared that way at a local fish shack. It was very good, but I still like it better grilled.

Annie

Annie, I grew up in Michigan and my Dad would occasionally fish on Lake Michigan for salmon (as a kid I hadn't a clue, mostly he caught bass / bluegills on smaller lakes)... having spent my adulthood in Alaska, where salmon is so at-the-ready, you've made me curious so I found this:

https://outdoor.wildlifeillinois.org/articles/the-fascinating-journey-of-coho-salmon-in-the-great-lakes-whats-in-a-name-a-salmon-by-any-other-name-would-be-just-as-silver

My sister had a decades-long career with Michigan Fish and Game, I bet she knew all about the history of successfully stocking the Lake Michigan with salmon. Now I must ask my mother what she remembers about it ! I'd love to try some on my next visit to MI - my brother fishes Lake St. Claire, I'd better ask him about it too.

Your barter situation with your nephew sounds ideal ! I've grown to appreciate a sweet glaze too, I'll try maple syrup this season, maybe with chili-crisp and pinot noir or something along those lines.... and pull out the cedar planks, like LoneJack said:))