Tasty Tuesday! Simple Salmon

My blog friend Jen at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam is the new host of the Tasty Tuesday Parade of Food! Click on over there for lots of inspiration and links to other yummy dishes. I was excited to participate with my own easy, yet impressive, recipe!

Whether on the grill, or under the broiler, I love to cook salmon this way. It makes any dinner seem like a special occasion. This is a great dish for company. And it is soooo easy to fix! My mom is visiting from Arizona, so we made this salmon Friday. Truly, it is so simple, a 12 year old could make this.

Start with some simple ingredients:

• Salmon (I get mine at Costco... this is about 1.5 pounds, fresh)
• Foil (Wrapping in foil makes it easy to grill or broil... and clean up is a breeze!)
• Herbs & spices (If you have fresh herbs, wonderful! If not, improvise with whatever you like.)
• Fresh Lemon (Optional, but it really adds something special.)
• Salt & Pepper
• A couple dashes of Olive Oil

Lay a large piece of foil out on a big cookie sheet. Add a bit of olive oil to keep the salmon from sticking. If your salmon has the skin still on, then you would lay it directly onto the oiled foil, skin side down.

If your salmon is without skin, then you will want to season both the top and the bottom. Start with a row of sliced lemons across the foil.

Next, add your seasonings. If you had fresh herbs, you could lay them down on top of the lemon. Dill, rosemary, thyme, cilantro... all are delicious! I only had dried herbs, so that is what we used. See how easy this is? Oh, look... My 12 year old son is prepping the salmon!

Lay the slab of salmon onto the bed of spices and lemons. Then season the top.... salt & pepper, herbs and spices. Zachary is using garlic, paprika, and herbes de Provence.

Finally, end with a layer of lemon slices. Add a drizzle of olive oil across the top.

Wrap it up in foil. I wrap it twice, and make sure that all the seams are tight. If I were grilling (it was too soggy outside to grill this time, unfortunately), I would turn the grill burners on high and lay the foil packet right onto the grill. For the broiler, I keep the foil packet on a cookie sheet.

Somewhere along the way I heard that fish should be cooked 10 minutes for every inch of thickness. So, when I prepare salmon, I put it under the broiler for 6 minutes. Then I flip the packet and cook for another 5 minutes. On the grill, I follow the same procedure... 6 minutes on the first side, flip, and 5 minutes onto the second side. It usually turns out perfectly!!! But, if you open it up and check it and find that it is underdone, you can close it up and put it back for another 2-4 minutes.

Doesn't that look delicious?!?

If you had a big crowd, you could prepare several large pieces of salmon early in the day. After seasoning and wrapping up the packets, you would refrigerate them until close to serving time. Fifteen minutes before serving, pull them out and throw them on the grill or under the broiler. Your grill could accommodate 4-5 salmon packets, if it is about the size of mine. You could probably put 3 packets under the broiler, directly on the rack without a cookie sheet underneath.

Can you imagine... a beautiful, tasty main course ready in just 10 minutes! If I have leftovers, I love it the next day for lunch on top of a salad. My husband likes to have salmon with eggs in the morning. But we usually don't have many leftovers!