A while back, I confessed that I have never cooked fish. It's partly because of the cost, and partly because I never picked up the skill. (And I am picky about seafood.) But last weekend Safeway had a sale on frozen salmon fillets, five bucks for two, so I figured what the heck.
I have mixed feelings about eating salmon. On the one hand, it's contributing to the global trade that is stripping our oceans bare. How crazy is it that we have a whole entire food industry dedicated to hunting wild animals? That's nuts. Farmed salmon is even worse from an ecological perspective. And from a health perspective, it can be high in mercury.
On the other hand, wild salmon is not only delicious, it's also very healthy. This lean meat is packed full of the right kind of omega-3 fatty acids, which are hard to find in other dietary sources.
So the question is, how do you cook salmon? The kidding-not-kidding answer is, "very gently." The biggest risk in cooking salmon is overcooking it. Once it's overcooked and dry, you're sunk. The good news is that it's hard to undercook it.
If you have a grill, it's easy: toss that sucker on there. If you don't have a grill, then I suggest the method I chose this weekend: bake it "low and slow" in the oven with some herbs.
Preheat your oven to 250 degrees, rub the salmon fillet with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper and some herbs, then bake it for about 30 minutes. You will know it is done when the meat flakes to the fork. (Fork it a little before you cook it if you need a reference for the texture of raw salmon.)
I chose to add parsley, garlic powder, and thyme to my salmon, but you can use almost any herb. Dill is a traditional choice, along with a squeeze of lemon. (And it's a good use for that dill you bought ages ago and never use!)
Image courtesy Flickr/gkdavie
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