Gravlox Experiment, or My Adventures With Salt Curing

I was at Costco on Friday and they had wild salmon for sale, so I decided to buy 2 nice big slabs o' fish, one for dinner, and one to experiment with.

I try and only buy wild fish. With salmon, the color is just so much nicer. You just have to be careful when cooking it that you don't over cook it and dry it out. So dinner came out yum, and I still had this other slab to contend with. Since I had a big wodge of dill in the fridge (from the pickle experiement), and I had just bought a big box of sea salt, I decided to make gravlax. I had done it once before and remember it came out yummers.

My steel trap of a memory has developed a number of leaks, it seems.

From memory, I whipped together the ingredients. Equal parts salt, sugar, and a half ration of pepper. I didn't bother to measure, I just eyeballed it. It was probably half a cup, half a cup and a quarter cup, roughly.

So in a large glass pan I laid some saran wrap and placed a huge wodge of dill down, then poured half the salt mixture on it, and laid the fish. I poured the other half of the salt mixture on top, and laid the rest of the dill on top. I wrapped the whole sucker in saran wrap, put it all in a plastic veggie bag (the thin, shitty kind you get at the supermarket to put your fruit in) and threw the whole mess in the fridge in the garage to sit for a few days.

That was on Friday. Today, I suddenly realized I had completely forgotten about the fish. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Yet another leak in the old STM (steel trap memory).

I brought it inside and hoped for the best. The pan was full of orangey pink liquid and the bag itself was just disgusting. I dumped the whole thing in the sink, and removed the salmon from the bag and rinsed off all the salt, sugar, pepper and dill.

It look a little strange and dried out, but the color was beautiful and rich.

Shaving it was a lot of fun. Not. I couldn't get nice even slices, but it did taste pretty good overall, if a bit salty. I probably could have made it with more sugar and less salt. Or maybe rinsed it another 498590300958577 times.

I don't remember it being so salty, or quite so dry. Probably the last time I made it was with farmed salmon. This came out almost like salmon candy.

Its all in the freezer right now, for those days when I have bugger all to make lunch with, for the boys to take to school. I can always defrost it in 5 minutes and throw it on some bread with butter or cream cheese. And if they don't like it.... well... they can starve.