The Cure · Starter
Dill and Aquavit Cured Salmon
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, a warm current of chile, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 1 kg salmon side, skin on, pin bones pulled
- 25 g fine sea salt (2.5% of the trimmed fish weight)
- 20 g caster sugar (2%)
- 4 g white peppercorns, cracked
- 3 g coriander seed, toasted and cracked
- 40 g dill, stalks and all, roughly chopped
- 30 ml aquavit or vodka
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Curing gravlaxBrining & curing
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: fish · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Weigh the trimmed fish and scale the salt and sugar to it, 2.5% and 2%, rather than reaching for a fixed spoonful.
- Rub the spirit over the flesh, press on the salt, sugar and cracked spice, then pack the dill over the top.
- Seal in a vacuum bag, or wrap tight in two layers of film in a tray, and hold at 4C (39F) for 48 hours, turning the parcel every 12 hours. 600 min
- Open it when the flesh has gone deep translucent orange throughout and a fingertip pressed into the thick end springs back instead of denting.
- Scrape off the dill, pat dry, and slice paper thin at a shallow angle down toward the skin, leaving the grey line behind.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir (Willamette or Burgundy)
- Also Right
- Chilled Gamay (cru Beaujolais)
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Hibiscus iced tea
The fatty fish that cross the red line: silk-textured, low-tannin reds meet their oils without a metallic clash.
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