If you’re buying salmon off the shelf instead of catching it straight out of the river, chances are it arrives to the grocery store frozen and you buy it thawed. This means, during the freezing and thawing process, the salmon loses a little bit of it’s firmness and retains more moisture causing a limp, mushy fish when you cook it. Gross. This little salt trick will help you get the flakiest salmon at home and takes no time at all to do!
How to get the Flakiest Salmon
Step One: Remove your salmon from the package, rinse and thoroughly dry the meat and the skin of the fish. Leave the skin on, it is essential to the cooking process. If your salmon isn’t cut into its serving portion, go ahead and do that.
Step Two: Using a lipped cookie sheet and a metal rack, put your salmon on the rack, skin side down.
Step Three: Thoroughly cover your salmon with kosher salt. A thick layer of salt on the top of the fish is what we’re looking for as seen here.
Step Four: Put the salmon in the fridge for 4 hours and up to but no longer than 6 hours.
What does the salt do during this time?
The salt helps pull moisture out of the fish while infusing a little salt flavor. This is known as a quick-dry brine, and if you wanted to make cured salmon, you would leave the salt on longer to completely dry the flesh out. We don’t want that, we just want to remove excess moisture before we bake it for dinner, hence why we leave this in for 4 hours.
Step Five: Remove the salmon from the fridge, rinse the salt off, and thoroughly dry again. Put the salmon on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and sprayed with cooking spray to keep the skin from sticking.
Step Six: Season to your liking BUT DO NOT ADD ADDITIONAL SALT. As mentioned above, the quick-dry brine already added a subtle saltiness so you don’t need any further salt.
I like topping my salmon with this fennel mix, sumac, dried dill, or everything bagel seasoning.
Step Seven: Put your salmon in a convection BROIL oven and cook for 12 minutes.
Step Eight: Carefully remove your fish and serve for dinner! It’s a super-easy way to get the flakiest salmon ever and we love preparing our fish like this every week.
I know what you might be thinking, but no- we do not have high blood pressure. Ha!
Pin the below image to Pinterest for future use.
This salmon would go perfectly over this salad.
