So, my salmon adven­ture comes to an end about a week after it started. I had sushi today for lunch, and after chew­ing on a small piece of smoked salmon in one of my rolls, can assertively say that this salmon beats any store bought/sushi chain ver­sion, any day.

In prep­ping for this recipe, I did a bit of research online to see if there were any meth­ods or tricks that would make this the best cure ever. But there wasn’t, this recipe was so sim­ple that there’s nowhere to go wrong. Through this research I also real­ized I was mak­ing Gravlax, not Lox. Lox is a cured, cold smoked salmon. Gravlax on the other hand is the term for a straight cure, also called Gravad Lax in some parts of Scandinavia.

The salmon can cure for as lit­tle as 24 hours, but most recipes I saw sug­gested at least a 36 hours cure. My bad boys sat in our spare fridge, wrapped in their juices, for a good 40+ hours. I was tak­ing no chances.

As I unwrapped the salmon, I couldn’t help but notice how much juice had been extracted by the salt, for which I’ve always mar­veled at that mag­i­cal abil­ity of salt to suck the water out of any mat­ter. I rinsed the filets under water to remove any bits of salt and dill, and pat­ted them dry to inspect how the cure took to them. Now flat­ter, denser, and darker in color com­pared to its start­ing point, I held it up to my nose and– sur­pris­ingly– was shocked at the rel­a­tively light scent of salmon.

Using my best sushi-chef abil­i­ties and wield­ing my sharpest knife, I care­fully sliced against the grain. Smooth slices on a bias, using one hand at the end of the salmon to catch each slice falling off. Finally my years of sit­ting in front of a sushi counter had done me some good. Oily, fleshy, salty, ten­der, oh-so-flavorful. It was so easy, once the mer­cury runs through my sys­tem I’m eager to try it again.

Gravlax

recipe adapted from Cook­ing for Engineers

Ingre­di­ents:

• 2 pounds sushi-grade salmon filets, skinned, trimmed, and deboned.
• 4 Tbsp. kosher salt
• 4 Tbsp. sugar
• 3 tsp. ground black pepper
• Dill– fresh or dried

Direc­tions:

1. Rinse salmon under cool water, and lay on tow­els to pat dry.
2. Mix the salt, sugar and pepper.
3. Lay the filet (mine was cut into 3 sec­tions, so I did this three times) on a large sheet of plas­tic wrap. Cake the filet with the salt cure, mak­ing sure to cover the filet in a nice thick layer of salt.
4. Sprin­kle the top with dill, or lay fresh dill to cover the top
5. Wrap up the filet, and repeat twice with two more sheets of plas­tic wrap.
6. Let sit in the fridge for 36–48 hours, or more.

Yield: 10–15 servings

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