Garde Manger · Starter
Gravlax, the Cure by Weight
- 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 fillet, skin on and pin-boned, previously frozen at -20C (-4F) for 7 days
- 30 g fine sea salt, 3 percent of the fillet weight
- 20 g caster sugar, 2 percent
- 6 g white peppercorns, cracked
- 2 g coriander seed, toasted and cracked
- 60 g dill, stalks included, chopped
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Curing gravlaxBrining & curing
Allergen screen
Found: fish
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 pin-boned fillet, then weigh the cure to it: salt at 3 percent, sugar at 2 percent, mixed with the pepper and coriander.
- Rub the cure over the flesh side, working the thin tail end last and lightest, then press the dill on in a thick blanket.
- Seal tight in a bag or double wrap with no air pocket, sit it in a tray under a 500 g weight, and cure at 3C (37F) for 36 to 48 hours, turning it every 12 hours in the brine it throws. 600 min
- Unwrap, scrape off the dill and pat dry; the flesh should have darkened to deep coral, feel springy under the thumb and no longer hold a dent.
- Slice on a shallow angle almost parallel to the board, in sheets thin enough to read a knife blade through, leaving the grey line against the skin 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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