I’m still looking for Scandinavian fish recipes, and I didn’t want to derail it for a specific recipe.
I’ve looked up a few gravlax recipes online. Some say that proper gravlax should conprise only four ingredients: Salmon, salt, sugar, and dill. Others promote juniper berries (I don’t know where to get them) and/or pepper. Most say to use granulated sugar, some say to use brown sugar. Some say you should only use the ‘sandwich’ method, turning every 12 hours, while others say you can make perfectly good gravlax with a single fillet. Some sites say the fish should be weighted, others say it’s not necessary. The dill is removed and the fish is washed after curing for a few days. But the store-bought gravlax I buy has dill on it. Or it doesn’t. One place says to leave the skin on, and another says take the skin off and use the salt/sugar/dill on both sides. And of course, the amounts of salt and sugar vary.
So here’s what I’m thinking: 60% sugar and 40% salt. Remove the skin and the grey flesh. Lay out fresh dill, put the salt/sugar mixture on the salmon and lay it on the dill. Coat the top of the filet with salt/sugar and lay on more dill. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and put it into a baking dish. Fill a one-gallon zip-top bag with water and lay it on top. Refrigerate for three days. At the end of three days time, rinse the fish and pat on freshly-chopped dill. Slice on the bias and enjoy.
Does anyone see anything wrong with that plan? The filets will come out of the freezer and go into the fridge to thaw, so that I can try making it this weekend.
It sounds fine. Gravlax is really hard to mess up. Really, as long as you leave it in the fridge rubbed in a mixture of roughly equal amounts of sugar and salt and another seasoning of your choice (usually dill), it’ll come out tasting great. I don’t know if weighting is absolutely necessary, either.
The only time or two I made it, it called for slightly moistening the sugar/salt mixture with some kind of booze. I think the recipe recommended some sort of grappa or eau de vie. All I had in the house was sake, so I used that, and it tasted extremely good.
Yep, gravlax, sliced thin and served with some nummy whole grain mustard and maybe a bit of rye and shaved onion, is extraordinarily good.
I did it once and it said this too. Specifically (for some reason I remember this vividly even though this gravlax experiment was 5-6 years ago) you moistened it only until the mixture resembled damp sand. I believe I used gin, reasoning that it is flavored with juniper.
I actually bought ready-made gravlax and hovmästarsås today. 4.5 dollars all in all.
A couple of tips:
Hovmästarsås is served cold, just like the gravlax itself. You can eat the boiled potatoes cold as well if you like (though I prefer them warm).
Dill is king. You can barely have too much of it.
I’ve looked at different variations of hovmästarsås (you can too, try google translate for a bunch of hits). Dill, salt, sugar, oil (neutral cooking oil, not olive oil), vinegar, (french) mustard seems to be it basically. Use good quality mustard with a touch of dijon, but not too much; hovmästarsås is actually quite mild.
He suggests flipping the sugar/salt ratios and making the mixture more salt than sugar.
After making this a few tiimes with him, I suggest a light wipe of liquid smoke before the salt/sugar/dill mixture. Otherwise follow your recipe, with the small exception of turning the fish halfway through the curing process. We always leave the skin on. There may a very small pocket of fish left uncured, depending on the size of the fillet you use.
Honey mustard and salmon is a match made in heaven. Making your own would be a good brown whole grain or stone ground mustard with just enough honey to sweeten it up pretty well. If anything, cut it a little bit with a little mayo.
Ok, this thread has inspired me. I just bought a nice big piece of salmon to try tonight. I have a few questions, as this will be my first attempt at gravlax:
1.** Johnny L.A**. said he was going to wrap his in plastic wrap after coating.** Canadiangirl** seems to say to leave it unwrapped to pour off the liquid. Which is better?
Is the idea to thickly coat the entire flesh with the salt/sugar mixture, or is it more of a sprinkling over top? The fish I have is fairly large, so I may need to get some additional salt and sugar, depending.
Would it be okay to lay the fish on a metal cookie sheet in the fridge, or would metal be a bad idea?
Every recipe I’ve seen says to wrap the fish in plastic wrap. (Some say to double-wrap to prevent leakage.)
The drill seems to be to entirely cover the fish with the salt/sugar mixture. Since it’s going to be washed off at the end, I’d assume that you’d want a nice coat instead of just a sprinkling. (Note: Use kosher salt, not table salt. Otherwise your ratio will be messed up. I haven’t made gravlax yet, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express. )
Since the fish is wrapped in plastic, I don’t think it should matter. But I’ll be using a glass dish myself.
As I mentioned in the OP, there are a lot of variations to the recipe (hence, this thread). One person will say to use a certain ratio of salt to sugar, and someone else will say that it’s too salty or too sweet. This first time, for me anyway, it’s going to be a crapshoot.
Canadiangirl: I was thinking about it on the way to work, and since I have two fillets I may do the ‘sandwich’ method.
Thanks, Johnny. What is the sandwich method? The piece I have is large enough to cut in half, which would then fit better in a glass baking dish I have.
The ‘sandwich method’ is to take two filets (ideally, I assume, from two sides of the same fish) and season both halves. Then put the dill on one half and top with the other, skin sides out.
I searched for ‘gravlax’ and ‘sandwich’ and found this page. They’re doing a single filet, rather than two filets skin-side out with the dill in the middle; but it’s a neat page.
It’s a two-hour trip from Pike Place Market to my house; so while the fish there is excellent, I usually just buy the wild-caught frozen salmon at Trader Joe’s. No worries about round worms.
Trader Joe’s frozen wild-caught salmon is pretty good, but not as good as the local stuff at PPM. I’m really hoping this experiment turns out well.
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