Quick Cured Salmon - How to Cure Salmon in 3 Minutes

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with quick cured salmon that's right this amazing technique is so fast it actually takes longer to explain it than it does to do it and think about it why pay twenty-five dollars a pound for gravlax at that fancy grocery store when you could buy fresh salmon for twenty-five dollars a pound and make your own it wait a minute so alright I'll admit we really don't do this to save money the real reason is so our foodie friends think we're a badass so we're going to get started and the first thing we need is the brine so into a bowl I'm gonna pour some fresh cold water yes we're using fresh water this time and then to that we're going to add a whole bunch of kosher salt and a fairly decent amount of white sugar and we're going to go ahead and give that a stir until it's completely dissolved and sure this would be quicker if we used hot water but then our water would have been cold and fresh but anyway no worries because after a couple minutes of stirring that cloudiness will disappear and it will look like water again and in the business we refer to this as a moment of clarity and once your brine looks like that simply set it aside while we move on to prep the salmon and there we go I have one beautiful piece of salmon and it should still have the skin on it and I'm going to recommend you ask the fishmonger for a center cut all right that's right in the middle of the fillet make sure you have them pull those pin bones out or you do that yourself because we want some nice uniform thick slices this piece of salmon is going to work the best and then the prep this here's what we're going to do there's a little bit of connective tissue right in the center you see that little streak down the middle what we'll do is we'll cut on either side of that right down to the skin but don't go through and then simply turn the blade parallel to the cutting board and slice it that way and then we'll go ahead and do the same thing on the other side keeping the knife between the flesh and the skin and then once you've done that on both sides go ahead and slide that knife blade right through like that and that piece of meat should come right off the skin alright and I'm not going to show it but I'm going to do the same thing to the other piece and then once I have those sections removed from the skin we can trim it up a little further if we want you can see that little bit of gray flesh there where it meets the skin so basically anything that's not that beautiful orange splash you can feel free to trim away and then once any fine-tuning trimming is done we're just going to turn that piece this way and carefully cut about quarter inch thick slices and obviously you can cut them thinner if you want or thicker if you want but if you want to use my briny times it's going to be kind of important you get it similar so I'm going to continue to slice that across and once our salmon has been sliced it's time to brine and I like to do 5 or 6 pieces at a time I mean I could probably get more in here but I know doing it in batches works great so better safe than sorry are you want to be sure about the cure so I'm gonna go ahead and place those slices in the brine and then believe it or not it's only going to sit in there for three minutes it's not called quick here for nothing so set your timer for three minutes and you could probably just let it sit there but you know me I can't stand in front of food for three minutes without touching it so I do move mine around a little bit like I said probably for no good reason and then exactly three minutes later we're going to fish those out onto a rack although you could probably just put these right onto paper towels I just thought the rack would look cooler but anyway we're going to fish those out and once those have been removed from the brine very important we need to Pat those dry a little bit so take a paper towel and kind of blot those off all right it's okay if they're moist you just don't want them wet and then once all our salmon slices have been cured and patted dry we're going to go ahead and put those on a platter we'll go ahead and wrap that nice and tight with plastic and then to finish the process we want to refrigerate those until ice cold before serving I would say a minimum of two to three hours although overnight I think's much better Izzie sit in the fridge those slices of salmon kind of continue to cure and you'll even get a little more of a firmer texture but anyway we're going to chill that thoroughly and then it's ready to unwrap and use and look how beautiful that is all right that colors deepened that textures firmed up very similar to a commercial smoked salmon or gravlax or other type of cured salmon and because of that salt and sugar and the brine it's perfectly seasoned so let's go ahead and unwrap that and start figuring out ways to eat this one of my favorite and simplest ways is just to put a little bit of ginger just like a half of a freakishly small wooden spoon just stir it into a little soy sauce and then just give that slice of cured salmon a little dip and that is absolutely fantastic like that so it's kind of a minimalist approach all right if you wanted to go full food bloggers you could serve it as a crudo with a little microburbs Aled maybe a little Green Goddess underneath youth maybe a little grated horseradish over the top that's another amazing way to enjoy this and you can really get a good feel for the textures I cut it with the fork I mean it has that firmness like a cured piece of salmon wood but it also retains this incredible suppleness just a luxurious texture so nice or of course you could just channel your inner New Yorker and do a take on a bagel and lox that's just a pumpernickel everything flatbread with some cream cheese a slice of the cured salmon and some chive and that bite right there is just as awesome as you would imagine but hey what are you doin imagining when you can actually experience okay so I really do hope you give this a try head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 2,046,788

Rating: 4.7974315 out of 5

Keywords: Salmon, Cured, gravlax, lox, fast, brined, brine, Curing, chef, john, foodwishes, appetizer, brunch, fish, seefood, snack

Id: bFoIJCDEqGw

Length: 5min 26sec (326 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 14 2014