the review: citrus grilled salmon

Um, wow. Let me start by saying that neither my mom nor I are salmon people. My mother grew up in Louisiana where red fish and trout were king (along with shellfish, of course), and where most often, fish was fried. I grew up influenced by Cajun cooking and by my mom’s culinary experiences. Salmon was just not a part of the picture.

Both of us can agree that salmon is outstanding at our local sushi bar. But now, we can also agree that citrus grilled salmon is the bomb.

My husband was out fishing on Saturday night (the brown drake hatch – big do-dah in these parts) so missed the amazing culinary feat of me actually (wo)manning the grill. I rocked it. The pictures don’t do this dinner justice. I guess this girl can’t grill and photograph at the same time. Oh, well. I’ll tell you what. It was certainly more important for me to have tasty dinner on Saturday night than have lovely photos to show you today. I must not be a real blogger after all.

Ok, onto the recipe. First thing you should know is that the recipe doesn’t really include amounts or types for the fish. I had to wing this part. I ended up grilling about one pound of salmon over about one and a half oranges. I made half of the batch of butter called for in the recipe, which was at least twice what I needed. I can’t imagine how much fish you would need to use all that butter. I also skipped the cayenne in the butter for the kids. This turned out to be a silly decision on my part as the kids refused to eat the fish anyway. No matter. My mom and I ate their fish. It was that good. We didn't miss the cayenne at all.

The recipe calls for grilling the fish over indirect heat. I used a disposable tinfoil pan directly on my (gas) grill for this, and reduced my grill heat to medium. I was surprised to find that it did take about twenty minutes for my fish to cook. It was moist and very flavorful, not over cooked at all. Oh, and I did leave the skin on the salmon while cooking. You can tell me why I shouldn’t have done that later. Take your own off if you want. Mine was delicious.

We served our fish with corn, grilled zucchini, and purple rice (from Louisiana). All around, an excellent summer meal. I do wish I could show you how beautiful the fish was before I grilled it, but alas, there were no surviving photos. You’ll have to just make it yourself.

In other news, my husband attempted to grill beets on Friday night. He used a bit of olive oil, some salt, and pepper and cooked over medium (direct) heat about 8 minutes a side. These maybe could have gone a little longer but I would recommend that you give grilling beets a try. They were sweet and smoky. Who knew?