Heather says:
Welcome to this week’s Fearless Friday. It’s a chance to push against your usual culinary boundaries. We have nearly 2,000 readers here on Home-Ec101.com and with that audience there are cooks of every level. Did you try a new recipe, learn a new technique, or did you sample a new food? Whatever steps you took and wether it was a success or failure, we’d like to hear about it. If you have a blog, link using the Mr. Linky tool. If you don’t, tell everyone in the comments.
Many years ago I was a nanny for a wonderful couple. They had relatives from the Boston area who would visit from time to time, always bringing treats. One such treat was lox, a salted cured salmon often eaten on bagels with cream cheese. I may not have much of a sweet tooth, but offer me a salty snack and I’ll be your friend for life. What can I say, I’m easy. Easy going, not a word, peanut gallery.
While searching for ideas for this series, I wandered across Holy Crap I Cured Salmon on Al Forno, a blog written by one of my local culinary heroes. I thought to myself, if Robert could do it, I could certainly try.
After a lot of Googling, I have enough cookbooks thank you very much. I discovered the magic ratio for salmon curing seemed to be 1:1:2 of sugar, fresh ground pepper, and kosher salt.
It had been many years since I’d even had lox, with that in mind, I bought a very small piece of salmon for the experiment. I carefully checked for bones. If there had been any, they would have been removed.
I rinsed the salmon and patted it dry with a paper towel. I stirred together the brown sugar, black pepper, and kosher salt. Then pressed the mixture firmly into all sides of the salmon. I had to pause to take the picture, I thought it was a neat contrast.
Once the salmon was thickly coated on all sides, I wrapped it in plastic wrap, leaving the sides slightly open. Salmon naturally has a lot of water, the curing process draws out much of the water and it needs somewhere to go. To allow the liquid to drain off, I set the salmon on a clean lid in a dish with a curved rim. I have children who rummage in the refrigerator and I was concerned about spills. It’s annoying enough to wipe out the fridge each week without worrying about salty fish juice. On top of the fish, I placed a clean plate.
Every morning and evening I rinsed the bottom plate and flipped the filet. I did not open the saran wrap. I have to admit, by Wednesday I was beginning to eye the fish with a feeling of unease. Was this a waste of time? Was it going to be disgusting? It appeared as though the salt was gone. I began to wonder if I had coated it thickly enough, had the salt simply dripped away with the liquid?
Early this morning, I removed the fish from its wrapper and rinsed off the salt and sugar mixture. What I had not been able to see was the salt was still there, it had changed appearance enough to blend in with the fish.
After rinsing off the coating, I felt much more comfortable with the results. I toasted a bagel and sliced the lox (or gravlox) into thin slices. At this point, I realized it way past time to sharpen my knives, but what do you do?
I spread the bagel with cream cheese and was pleasantly surprised to discover my experiment was a tasty success.
Here’s the quick rundown if you’l like to try it at home.
Choose a nice piece of salmon, remove any bones, rinse and pat dry. For 1 lb of salmon you’ll need approximately 2 TBSP ground pepper, 2 TBSP brown sugar and 4 TBSP kosher salt. Mix and press into the filet. Wrap with plastic wrap, set on a lid or inverted saucer to allow the liquid to run off. Weight with a plate or jar. Turn every twelve hours or so for five days. Rinse, slice thinly, and enjoy.
Tell me, Home Eccers, what did you do for Fearless Friday?
I was reading through the Fearless Friday post and comments and wondering what I could challenge myself with when I remembered that just about 2 weeks ago I cooked something I had never cooked before. I'm going to use that. I made braised beef short ribs and oh my!! They were easy and great. I think I'll make them again tomorrow for dinner, they just about melted in your mouth. I was always thinking that there wasn't much meat for all the work, but it worked out wonderful. Long slow cooking is the key. I browned the ribs in batches in olive oil and garlic in my cast iron dutch oven, Then added all the ribs back to the pan, added one can of beef consume and one whole quartered onion and put it in the oven with the lid on at 350 for 2 hours. i served it with oven roasted potatoes and steamed Brussels sprouts, my family was quite happy with it.
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