Salmon: The Results Post
Yay, Benji won! Oh wait, wrong results…
So, what happened with the salmon?
Above is a picture of it as a small portion appeared on Deb’s plate.
I used my cast iron frying pan, which I was thinking to do anyway because covering it on a burner creates an oven-like cooking effect. Heated it a little with some olive oil, put the salmon skin side down, put some lemon pepper - what seemed like a generous amount - and a slight bit of olive oil on the top, and cooked it for a minute or two on the stove.
Then I stuck it in a “425” oven. Ten minutes later, I was amazed at how slowly it was cooking. Though the pilot runs pretty warm and it would have slow-cooked through eventually. Turns out that no gas gets to the burner tube in the oven, and nothing past the pilot will light. Doh. Probably the burner tube thingy has to be replaced, which when it had to be done when I lived in Quincy cost the landlord $150. But gave the stove decades more of life.
So it was that I ended up with the pan on the burner, per my original plan before there was such a chorus of “and then put it in the oven...” from commenters. Cooked it mostly covered on low heat, and in the end turned it over for a minute, then back, to make the top look more traditionally cooked. Contrary to my normal penchant for cooking things to death, I got it only just done as one is supposed to do with fish.
How was it?
Very fishy smelling. I didn’t expect salmon to smell so stridently fishy. Very strong tasting, if not bad. The lemon pepper was good, but mostly buried under the taste of the salmon. When I saw Jen’s pointer to a recipe for cumin encrusted salmon I thought it sounded way to strongly spiced, but this piece of fish could have handled that and would have been good. I could easily have doubled the lemon pepper, or mixed in or replaced that with some other spices. Not like I have to conserve the lemon pepper; it was fifty cents for a good sized container. Heck, I pour on the expensive spices, when I am on familiar ground.
Next we’ll have to try a white variety of fish. It’s good to know that even though the cheapest of cheap price for fish is $5 a pound, 0.6 lbs was at least a serving more than we needed.
Oh, Sadie hated it. She wasn’t very hungry anyway, and instead of letting her sit at the table and think about trying a piece of the salmon, we enthusistically told her it was “like tuna,” which is one of her favorite things, and gave her a bite in the living room. She was all betrayed because she though “like tuna” meant “it is tuna.” Oh well. As we tell her, all we ask is that she try it, and be open to trying it again sometime in the future when her tastes might have changed or it might be a better version of the food. Since she eats almost anything, she’s entitled to a few exceptions.
I’ve never had the salmon smell fishy? We get ours at costco. I think a 3lbs piece is around $10 and its skinless.
Its always been very mild tasting when we have had it.
But could be that I’m only used to the kind that we get..Posted by Wayne on 08/18 at 11:30 PM
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