This salmon dish basically launched my teaching career. It was one of the dishes in my first cooking class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. It predates my restaurant jobs. It’s before I knew how to do things like this or that -- you know the fancy stuff.
But in spite of its simplicity, it’s still my favorite salmon dish. The glaze hits all your taste buttons with sweetness, saltiness, acidity, and umami. The outside is browning on steroids and the inside is buttery soft.
But what brings this salmon completely over the top is chilling it in the fridge overnight. That’s when the real magic happens -- when all those aggressive flavors become more harmonious and blended, like a really good choir. The texture gets better too. It becomes denser and richer. And what better time to give a chilled salmon dish a try than in the summer.
It’s a perfect dish to bring to a picnic, all the work is done the day before, and it goes well with absolutely any side dish. Set your oven rack as close as possible to the broiler element and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl mix together20g of apricot preserves, 8g of balsamic vinegar, and 20 grams of tamari style soy sauce.
Let’s give it all a stir. After you make this dish once, it’s totally fine to eyeball all the ingredients. You want a nice fatty salmon for this dish. I am using farm-raised Atlantic salmon. King salmon would also work, but lean wild varieties like coho or sockeye will taste dry. Put the salmon on a foil-lined, shallow metal baking sheet.
Sprinkle it with a little black pepper and a generous amount of salt. Keep in mind that cold dishes generally need more salt than hot one because we dont taste things as strongly when they are cold.
Turn on your broiler. Right before putting the salmon under the heating element, spoon just enough of the soy sauce mixture to cover its top, but not so much that the glaze forms puddles around the salmon.
Those puddles Wilburn, so we want to avoid them until we are done with the broiling step. My rack doesn’t go close enough to the heating element to give me the kind of browning that I want. If you are in this situation, you can invert another baking sheet and use it as a riser.
In my oven, this is the difference between the top that is beautifully browned vs dried up. Place the salmon under the broiler until the belly browns. The belly will brown first due to its insanely high fat content. For me, this took 4 minutes, but all broilers are different. To brown the rest of the salmon, we need to protect the belly with foil.
This is a good opportunity to reglaze the area we want to brown more. Back under the broiler we go, and 1 to 2 minutes later, it’s all lovely and brown. Now our broilers job is done. Turn it off and set your oven back to 350F.
Now that well be using much more gentle and indirect heat, we can dump the remaining sauce on top of the salmon. As the salmon cooks, this liquid sauce will thicken into a glaze. Since our salmon just got a lot of heat from the top, we want to even it out with some heat from the bottom, so Ill place it in the bottom third of the oven.
The belly will only take another couple of minutes. At this point it should be done and there is no need to overcook it. Sure, it would be nice to keep our salmon intact for the thumbnail, but I say screw the thumbnail. I want moist and delicious salmon. If your spatula goes through it like butter, that area is cooked enough. If it doesn’t, put it back in the oven and give it another couple of minutes.
Slide the spatula between the flesh and the skin and lift the belly off. See how the inside is a bit more orange than the outside -- that’s what a perfectly done salmon looks like. There is no need to cook it to the doneness of canned fish.
I am sure the thick part isn’t done yet, so the rest of my salmon is going back in the oven. Let’s give it another 4 minutes and then well go from there. We need to take a look at the thickest most inside part of this fillet.
Follow the natural divisions between the flakes and open it up. Nope, I can’t open it up yet. It’s completely stuck in the center. Let’s give it another4 minutes and then we’ll try again. If I could pull it apart at least halfway, I give it only 2 minutes, but I could only get about of an inch in. With fish, it’s always safer to check early and to check often.
Let’s see how we are doing now. Now we are good. As soon as you can pull the flakes apart, you are done. Yes, this orange color is a good thing. Keep in mind that the internal temperature will continue to go up as the fish rests.
Just a reminder that your heat source does not cook the inside of your meat. It’s the outside meat that cooks the inside. So just let it rest and do its job. Let’s put it all back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Cool it to room temperature,
Then wrap all this foil around it and put it in the fridge for at least 5 hours, though I prefer overnight. If you need to keep it for an extra day, that’s totally fine. This salmon is cooked and will last for 2 days with no problems.
Here is what the texture is like after cooling-- its dense, but super soft. So just peel those buttery flakes off the skin and enjoy. I don’t eat the skin in this dish. We didn’t crisp it up and even if we did, it wouldnttaste good cold.
But what this salmon lacks in the skin department it totally makes up for in the meat. Since all the broilers are different, let’s do a little broiler troubleshooting. My salmon burnt. Any time you have something under the broiler, don’t try to multitask.
Sit right next to your oven and check it every 30 seconds. My salmon took too long to brown. This is a common problem because some broilers aren’t very powerful. If you can’t get your broiler to brown faster even after moving the food closer to the heating element, here are some other strategies to consider.
Try getting a really thick piece of salmon. The thicker it is, the more time you have to brown it before it cooks through. Make sure to geta piece near the head of the fish. That has more fat and will brown a lot faster than the leaner tail. You can also try not preheating the oven.
This way the salmon won’t start cooking with the ambient heat and your broiler will have longer to do its job. Just keep in mind that your baking time might end up being a lot longer than mine because I am starting from 350 degrees, and you are starting from a cool oven.
I didn’t have a chance to use all the sauce. Remember how most of the sauce didn’t go in until the baking step to prevent it from burning. If your salmon is cooked through by the time the broiling step is done, your sauce won’t have a chance to cook and thicken. That’s not the end of the world. Pour it into a small skillet and boil it down just until it starts to thicken.
Pour it over your finished salmon and let it cool. I can’t find my broiler. If you looked at the top of your oven, and didn’t find a heating element there, it’s possible that you have a drawer on the bottom of your oven that allows you to use the oven heating element as the broiler.
Until I moved to my current house and bought myself a fancy stove, all my cheap little gas stoves worked like that. Those broilers can be just as good, so don’t be put off by their strange location.
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