Baking Salmon Like A Pro!

It's easy to overthink things sometimes and this is undoubtedly true in the kitchen. For instance, when considering the various ways to cook salmon—like roasting, grilling, poaching and so on—you might find yourself wondering if certain techniques are better in certain situations.

If your situation is crispy skin, then yes, there's a technique that is best for achieving that outcome (see below!). Working with fillets? Then, you may have to consider a different style of cooking. Similarly, if you're looking to make a quick and easy family dinner, salmon is perfect—but breaking out the cedar planks and firing up your charcoal grill probably isn't.

As easy as ABC
There's no magic formula here. The best reason to cook salmon on the grill is when you want grilled salmon and the same applies to poaching, roasting, and broiling. We have salmon's straightforward anatomy to thank for this. Unlike beef, where cuts from the shoulder, flank, rib, or rump each call for vastly different cooking techniques, salmon only comes two ways: steaks or fillets.

Nor, for that matter, is butchering salmon yourself (to say nothing of descaling it!). Unless you're a trained fish cutter armed with a very sharp fillet knife, you'll probably leave a heartbreaking amount of flesh on the bones and the fillets you do produce will lack uniformity.

In other words, if you're looking to feed at a minimum 12 people and you're buying a whole salmon, you would be wise to have your fishmonger cut it up into steaks or fillets (or some of both). And be sure to ask for the bones and head, as these will make absolutely magnificent salmon stock.

Steak or Fillet?
Steaks are cut across the body and they resemble horseshoes, each with a set of rib bones and a section of backbone. Fillets, on the other hand, are cut lengthwise, along the body and thus contain no bones. They tend to be roughly rectangular (or trapezoidal).

Steaks most likely have the skin on and fillets are more likely to be available in both skin-on and skinless forms, although when making your selection, consider that crispy salmon skin is one of the greatest culinary pleasures known to the world.

Baking them:
Salmon is a moist, fatty fish, which means you can cook it at high temperatures with relatively little worry of it overcooking or drying out. With that said, it's still fish, which means the cooking time will be fairly short. Here are three different techniques for cooking salmon in the oven.



Baked salmon: In this case, we're cooking the salmon uncovered on a sheet pan or shallow baking dish in a 425 F oven, for around 12 to 15 minutes assuming a thickness of about 1 inch. Note that we're not enclosing the salmon in foil (which we'll talk about next). You can coat it with olive oil, season it with Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, and add whatever herbs, aromatics, lemon slices, and whatever else your stomach desires. This method will work equally well for fillets and steaks, whether skin-on or skinless.



Salmon cooked in foil (or parchment): This is technically a way of steaming the salmon, but don't let that fool you—salmon cooked in foil or parchment is incredibly flavourful and luxurious. It's also fast, easy, and light on the cleanup. Basically, it involves sealing up the salmon, along with the usual herbs and citrus and all, in a pouch of aluminum foil and baking it in a very hot oven for 7 to 10 minutes. If you substitute parchment paper for the foil, you can even do it in the microwave in a mere 3 to 4 minutes. For more detail, check out this 101-level tutorial on cooking salmon in foil.



Slow-roasted salmon: Here's a low-temperature variation that uses the oven, and if you've got time to let it cook for up to an hour, this technique will produce moist, brightly colored salmon with a firm, springy texture. All it requires is a baking sheet and a shallow pan of water. While your oven heats to 225 F, brush a 2-pound fillet with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Set the pan of water on the bottom rack and the salmon, skin-side down on the baking sheet and bake on the upper rack for about an hour.