Quick Cured Salmon - How to Cure Salmon in 3 Minutes

Hi, I'm Chef John from Food Wishes.com with Quick Cured Salmon. That's right, this amazing technique is so fast that it actually takes longer to explain than it does to do it and think about it. Why pay $25 per pound for gravity locks? fancy grocery store when you can buy fresh

salmon

for 25 a pound and make your own wait a minute so I admit we don't really do this to save money the real reason is so our foodie friends think that a tough guy, so let's get started and the first thing we need is the brine, so in a container I'm going to pour some fresh, cold water.

Yes, this time we will use fresh water and then add to that. a bunch of kosher salts and a pretty decent amount of white sugar and we're going to go ahead and stir until it's completely dissolved and sure this would be faster if we used hot water, but then our water wouldn't have been cold and fresh, but of course anyway don't worry because after a couple of

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 the brine looks like that just leave it to a side while we prepare the

salmon

and that's it.

I have a beautiful piece of salmon that should still have the skin on and I will recommend that you ask the fishmonger for a center cut right in the middle of the salmon. fillet, make sure you have the bones removed or do it yourself and since we want thick, even slices, this piece of salmon will work best and then to prepare this, this is what we're going to do, there's a little bit of connective tissue right in the center, see that little stripe in the middle, what we'll do is cut on each side of that all the way to the skin, but don't go through it and then just turn the blade parallel to the cutting board and cut it that way and then we'll go ahead and do the same thing on the other side keeping the knife between the meat and the skin and then once you've done that on both sides, go ahead and slide that knife in.

Blade like this and that piece of meat should come away from the skin, and I'm not going to appear, but I'll do the same thing with the other piece and then once I've removed those sections. the skin we can trim it a little bit more if we want you can see that little bit of gray flesh where it meets the skin so basically anything other than that beautiful orange flesh you can feel free to trim it and then once anything fine. The tuning trimming is now done, we're just going to turn that piece around like this and carefully cut slices about a quarter of an inch thick and obviously you can cut them thinner if you want or thicker if you want, but if you want to use my brining times, it will be It's important that it's similar so I'll continue to cut it and once our salmon has been cut it's time to brine it and I like to do five or six pieces at a time, I mean I could probably put more here. but I know doing it in batches works very well, so better safe than sorry.

Okay, you want to be sure of the

cure

, so I'm going to go ahead and put those slices in the brine and then, believe it or not, it's just going to stay. there for three

minutes

, it's not called fast for nothing here, so set the timer for three minutes and you could probably leave it there, but you know me, I can't stand in front of food for three minutes without touching it, so I do it. 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 them out on a rack, although you could probably put them right on paper towels.

I thought the grille would look cooler. but anyway we're going to take them out and once we've removed them from the brine, it's very important that we need to dry them a little bit, so take a paper towel and pat them dry, okay, it's okay if they're wet. you just don't want them to get wet and then once all of our salmon slices have been

cure

d and dried, we're going to go ahead and put them on a plate, we're going to go ahead and wrap them nice and tight with plastic and then to finish the process we want refrigerate them until chilled before serving, I'd say a minimum of two or three hours, although I think overnight is much better, since they stay in the refrigerator, those salmon slices continue to cure and you'll even get a slightly textured firmer, but we're still going to cool it completely and then it's ready to be unwrapped and used and look how beautiful, okay, that color has deepened, that texture has firmed up, very similar to a commercial smoked salmon or grovlox. or another type of

cured

salmon and because of the salt and sugar in the brine it is perfectly seasoned, so let's go ahead and unpack it and start discovering ways to eat it.

One of my favorite and easiest ways is to simply add some ginger. like half a weirdly small wooden spoon, just stir it in a little bit of soy sauce and then give that slice of cured salmon a little bit of sauce and that's absolutely fantastic like that, so that's a minimalist approach, if you want . Wow whole food blogger, you could serve it raw with some micro herb salad, maybe a little green goddess underneath, maybe some grated horseradish on top, that's another amazing way to enjoy it and you can really get a good idea of the textures. cut it with the fork, I mean, it has that firmness like a piece of cured salmon wood, but it also retains this incredible flexibility, luxurious texture, so nice or, of course, you can just channel your inner New Yorker and make a version of a bagel and locks, that's just pumpernickel bread, all flatbread with a little cream cheese, a slice of cured salmon and some chives, and that bite is just as amazing as you imagine, but hey, what are you doing imagining when you can really experience something good?

So I really do it. I hope you try this, visit foodwishes.com for all ingredient quantities and more information as always, and as always, enjoy.