Spice-Rubbed Salmon Minimizes Salt and Maximizes Flavor!

This past week, Harvard University released new research providing insight on the negative effects of sodium on our health.  The study linked excessive salt consumption to nearly 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths worldwide in 2012.  One in 10 Americans dies from eating too much salt!  One in three deaths linked to sodium were people under 70 years old!

It turns out that most of us eat about two times the sodium we should be eating every day.  The culprit:  fast food, prepared food, processed food, and eating out.  American’s eat out an average of five times per week, and food eaten in restaurants – especially chains and fast food restaurants – is loaded with salt.  

One news report this past week laid it out bluntly – if we want to solve our salt problem and the impact sodium has on our health, we have to eat real food and we need to prepare it ourselves:  in other words, we need to learn to cook. 

Cooking takes time, care, and love – but with a few tricks, it IS possible to get healthy food, made from scratch, on the table in very little time.  This week, Food Snob’s presents her fourth and final entry in her fish series:  Brown Sugar and Spice-Rubbed Salmon.  It is Food Snob’s fastest fish dish – it CAN be on the table in 15 minutes!  Food Snob adjusted this recipe several years ago, reducing the salt by half.  This is a trick YOU can do.  Try using the about half the salt asked for in a recipe and taste – you can always add more.  Most of the time, you can reduce salt by about 25 percent without ever knowing what you are missing. This salmon recipe originally called for 1 and 1/2  teaspoons of salt; Food Snob reduced it to 3/4 teaspoon, and on occasion, she has used as little as 1/2 teaspoon.  This past week, Food Snob served the salmon with a Massaged Kale Salad (yes, you read that correctly:  MASSAGED Kale Salad – watch for it in a future blog posting – delicious!) but this salmon works well with just about any vegetable. 

Here are a few reminders about cooking salmon:

(1)     Start with wild caught fish – fresh or flash-frozen, thawed right before cooking in cold water in your sink.  As Harold McGee says in his book “Keys to Good Cooking:  A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes,” sometimes flash-frozen fish is better quality than fresh fish that has been sitting too long in transport or the grocer’s cooler.  Right now, Food Snob has been buying flash-frozen, wild-caught Copper River Salmon, available at Costco.  Very lean, and delicious!

(2)     Start with fully thawed fish and do not overcook.  Salmon tastes best when still moist, cooked medium rare to medium, between 130 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit.  Check with a thermometer – but based on Food Snob’s experience, the correct temperature is reached by cooking the fish about 3 to 4 minutes per side; or 6 to 8 minutes total.

(3)     Cook over medium to medium-high heat – so fish browns nicely, but does not burn.

(4)     If you have to hold your fish while you are waiting for other parts of your dinner to finish cooking, keep it warm in a 170-degree oven, uncovered.  Do not stack the fish pieces and try to leave some space between each piece.

Food Snob’s recipe for Brown-Sugar and Spice-Rubbed Salmon, which follows, requires just a few ingredients and is a great dish to serve you, your family, or your  dinner guests.  Food Snob likes this salmon dish best with mashed sweet potatoes and roasted asparagus.  To make mashed sweet potatoes for four, pierce a large sweet potato (yam) in several places, place in a covered casserole with a little water, and microwave for 8 to 10 minutes until fork tender.  Douse sweet potato with cold water and peel off skin.  Mash with a hand masher; add some curry powder, a little butter or olive oil, a tablespoon or two of orange or apple juice, and a little Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.  Reheat in the microwave if necessary and serve with the salmon.  Here's the recipe:

Brown-Sugar and Spice-Rubbed Salmon – makes 4 servings

Ingredient List

Spice Rub

2 Tablespoons brown sugar, packed

¾ teaspoon Kosher salt

½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper

½ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon ground mustard

Salmon

4 four- to six-ounce fillets of wild-caught salmon, rinsed and patted dry

1 to 2 teaspoon olive oil

Preparation:

Heat a large, heavy-bottom, non-stick skillet over medium heat.  Be sure heat is not too hot or the brown sugar in the spice rub will burn.  Coat the skillet with cooking spray; add the olive oil.

While the skillet is heating, mix the spice rub ingredients together in a small bowl.  When the skillet is hot, carefully divide the spice rub between the four salmon fillets, pressing the rub firmly onto the surface.  If your salmon has skin, press the spice rub onto the side without the skin.

Immediately invert the salmon pieces into the skillet, SPICE-RUB SIDE DOWN.  Do not allow the spice rub to sit on the salmon for a long time before putting it into the skillet or the rub will begin to dissolve and the salmon will not caramelize.

Allow the salmon to cook for 3 to 4 minutes; the spice rub will dissolve and brown onto the salmon.  Turn salmon over carefully; allow the salmon to cook another 3 to 4 minutes until medium rare to medium.  Carefully flip the salmon back over and serve, scraping any of the caramelized sauce onto the salmon. Here's the salmon served with the kale salad:

Recently, Food Snob has been having fun roasting vegetables.  She has roasted just about every vegetable she can think of and is loving the result.  This past week, she discovered roasted green beans – see the easy recipe next week!