Quote:
Originally Posted by craigster59
You sure do get your share of Salmon! What's your go to preparation for eating? I knew a guy who talked about wrapping in foil and using the "pot scrubber" setting on the dishwasher.
Nice catch BTW Grant!
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For King (aka Chinook) or Coho a decent amount of what I catch is consumed raw, either as sashimi/sushi or (my personal fave) poke. To properly prepare it this way you take entire filets and rub them with kosher salt and allow the salt to draw out excess liquid for 1+ hours (a surprising amount of liquid will come out), then you put the filets into a bath of rice vinegar for 20 minutes before patting dry and skinning/slicing into nice sashimi blocks. The last step is vacuum sealing and putting into a cooler with a generous amount of dry ice for 24 hours of extreme cold to kill parasites etc and make it safe to eat raw.
For actual "cooking" preparations I have three that are "go to":
1) Rub a generous amount of either pesto or
"rub with love" salmon rub onto the flesh and bake at 450 (either in my oven or on my traeger smoker) until the flesh is just flaking, 7-15 minutes depending on the thickness of the fish. The rub with love stuff is dynamite.
2) Poach in olive oil. This takes an extravagant amount of olive oil (you need the filet completely submerged in oil) but the result is silky and moist. I usually use the Costco brand oil for this. Get the oil (optionally doctored up with some fresh herbs) to 180, drop the entire filet in there, maintain 180 for 15 minutes, pull the fish out and pat dry to remove most oil, then serve.
3) Slice into candy bar sized portions and then cure it and smoke it. I typically "cure" for 24-48 hours in a combo of brown sugar, salt, black pepper, maple syrup and gin. Then I let it dry on racks in the fridge until it forms a "pellicle" which is basically a skin of dryness on the outside of the meat, then smoke as low as I dare. The result is what locals call "salmon candy" which is a bit sweet and kind of jerky-ish, a favorite snack to eat when I am out trying to catch more salmon.