Recipe: Simple Sweet & Savory Glazed Salmon

Hey every­one! I have a dozen or so half-finished arti­cles lined up, so while I am plug­ging away on them, I thought I would pub­lish my recent culi­nary adventure.

First, a con­fes­sion: I recently pur­chased 14 lbs. of wild-caught salmon from Vital­Choice (arguably one of the best wild seafood sources in the world), know­ing full well that I seri­ously dis­like the taste of salmon. I do not mind them per­son­ally – I think they are swell sea crea­tures – but the taste of cooked salmon does not bode well with me. I will take stinky canned tuna over any sort of salmon any day. How­ever, I know salmon is per­haps one of the health­i­est foods in the world, and con­tains a myr­iad of antiox­i­dants (astax­an­thin for the win!) and omega 3 fatty acids. It is easy to digest, looks pretty, and is easy to pre­pare – but how do I get past the taste? Well, I thought, I love the taste of teriyaki or any­thing remotely resem­bling teriyaki, so that got my inner wheels turn­ing about using my faux soy sauce (coconut aminos) and a sweet glaze to down­play the strong fla­vor of the fish. The results prac­ti­cally made me purr.

For those of you with­out this salmon-aversion prob­lem, frig­gin cook it how­ever you want to, but this one will be a win­ner for any­one who thinks they can­not eat salmon.

Sim­ple Sweet & Savory Glazed Salmon

You will need:

• 16–24 oz. wild-caught salmon filet, bone­less (do not get skin­less – keep that skin on!)
• 2–3 Tbsp. coconut aminos
• Raw, unfil­tered honey
• Gar­lic gran­ules (gar­lic pow­der will also suffice)
• Chicken or fish sea­son­ing blend
• (Optional) a lit­tle pow­dered gin­ger or gin­ger juice

See how short that ingre­di­ent list is? You prob­a­bly have every­thing already, except maybe the cooc­nut aminos, which you can get here or at a local Whole Foods or health store.

So here’s how you do it:

• First, make sure your salmon is nowhere near frozen. If it is frozen, keep it wrapped in its pack­age and put it in a con­tainer of water to thaw. Once thawed, give it a nice rinse under cool water and lightly pat dry (no one wants to eat towel lint).
• Pre­heat the oven to 400 F.
• Line a bak­ing tray with foil or unbleached parch­ment paper.
• Put the salmon skin-side down on the foil/paper.
• Driz­zle coconut aminos onto the salmon and let it soak in. Depend­ing on the size of the filet, you may use 2–3 Tbsp. Use what you feel is necessary.
• Sprin­kle on gar­lic gran­ules and fish sea­son­ing to your taste. I use about 1 tsp. each to really get the salmon coated in the sea­son­ings. This would also be the time to apply your choice of gin­ger, should you choose to use it.
• In a zig-zag motion, driz­zle honey onto the salmon. If you have a squeeze bot­tle of raw, unfil­tered honey, just squeeze it straight out of there. If not, scoop out a Table­spoon and make a nice light driz­zle over the filet.
• Done! Once the honey is on, don’t touch it, oth­er­wise it will get all smeary and stick to you instead of the fish.
• Bake for 15–20 min­utes. Check on it at 15 min­utes to see how it’s doing. You know it’s ready when it flakes eas­ily with a fork and looks mighty fine.

Hint: When you serve up a nice piece of this salmon filet, make sure to get that nice brown fat that lies right under the skin. Omega 3 fatty acids are highly con­cen­trated in that brown part, so go for it. Your body (and your skin) will thank you.

I hope you enjoy! If you have any salmon recipes of your own, do share them with me in the com­ments below – I would love to try them out.
~Steph  x