Since turning the ripe old age of fifty I’ve been monitoring my health a little more. You’ll recall the posts on the birthday gift from the Australian Government and the follow up on my colonoscopy. Tonight I want to share with you how I make perfectly baked salmon.
Given a need to keep everything in good shape I reexamined my eating habits and thought rather than the low carbohydrate high fat diet, given my age, I should look at reducing my saturated fat intake and try to keep sugar to moderate levels. That meant a reassessment of how much red meat I ate. I’ve basically reduced the amount of beef, lamb and pork to occasional ingestion and I treat those occasions as special. The mainstay protein of my diet at the moment has been skinless chicken and fresh Atlantic salmon (from the clean waters around Tasmania).
I used to cook my salmon in a frying pan with a lid on for five minutes and it would give me perfect results albeit a little smoky. I used to use grape seed oil to stop the skin from sticking to the bottom of the frying pan. It also meant I would have lovely crisp skin. In an effort to further reduce the amount of oil, I’ve turned to baking my salmon. I have a small bench top toaster/oven which is perfect for cooking small sized fillets of fresh salmon.
To achieve perfectly baked salmon I heat the oven to 200 °C (392 °F) and then on baking paper I place the salmon and add a little salt and pepper and anything else I may want to season the salmon with, e.g., chilli flakes or dried mixed herbs. If you like you could rub in a small amount of olive oil but it really isn’t necessary. I then place the salmon in the oven for 12 minutes (I use a timer so I don’t get it wrong).
After 12 minutes I turn off the oven and open the door. I then let the salmon rest for 5 minutes and don’t do anything with it. After 5 minutes it’s cool enough to pick up with your fingers and to be placed/arranged on a plate. At this stage it can also be flaked apart if you wish to add it to pasta or rice.
I’ve added some photographs of my baked salmon meals including a few time-lapse videos of me consuming these perfectly baked salmon dishes.
If you click on a photograph it will open up a short YouTube video.
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