Fillet your Salmon, then Grill it or make Gravlox (home style lox) Recipe

Salmon is the king of fish. Learn to filet your own salmon, then choose a great recipe for grilling or making gravlox. Salmon is a unique fish among all the fishes of the sea. The salmon flesh is pinkish to almost red, the flavor somewhere between ocean and fresh water fish, the skin an amazing study of beauty and elegance attached with delicate collagen strands.

Preparing salmon at home is not difficult. If you fillet your own fish, you can save money, get fresher fish, and prepare your favorite salmon recipes at a fraction of the price of a restaurant salmon entree. Coming soon, pictures to go with these instructions.

How to Fillet a Salmon

Choose a good, sharp filet knife. You'll fillet faster and better with a good knife. We've done it with both inferior and appropriate knives. Believe us, get a good fillet knife. This knife would be great to filet salmon.
Purchase a very fresh salmon if possible. If not possible, fully thaw a frozen salmon in the refrigerator overnight.
Rinse the salmon well under running water.
If your salmon is not gutted, first gut the salmon by slitting the belly from the tail to the gills. Remove entrails, saving the salmon roe, caviar, if you desire.
Cut off the head if desired. If you're going to skin the fillet anyway, you may as well remove the head at this point for ease of cutting. Also cut off fins at this point.
Make a slit from tail to top along the back bone of the salmon. This will be the split along the backbone that will yield two fillets. Place the salmon on one side.
Carefully slide the fillet knife in the cut from back to belly along the spine. You will get to the bones that extend from the spine along the lateral line of this beautiful fish. Very gently use the fillet knife along the angle of the bones to loosen them from the flesh. Or don't bother with that, just press very firmly along the spine from head to tail using the fillet knife to slice as closely along the spine as possible.
When you get to the tail, cut through the skin, releasing the side of salmon from the skeleton. If you did not use angle method, at this point use pincettes to remove the lateral bones you will find in a row down the center of the fillet.
Turn over the side of salmon to remove the skin. Gently use the fillet knife to separate a corner of the skin from the fish flesh, then use a pulling motion with one hand and the fillet knife in the other to pull the skin away from the fish flesh.
Repeat for the other side of salmon steps 7-9.
Rinse salmon filets in cold water.

Grilled Salmon Fillet, Gravlox recipes

Now that you've got that salmon filleted, you'll want to make it into something tasty. Salmon is the king of fishes in the sea. The uniquely delightful flavor of salmon is best left to accenting it, rather than drowning it in a fancy sauce.

Favorite Grilled Salmon Recipes

When grilling your salmon, do not overcook it. Overcooked salmon is dry and less flavorful than just grilled to perfection salmon. How do you tell when the salmon is done? The flesh of the fish goes from a transluscent pink to a more opaque pink. Use a fork to check the center of your salmon fillet. When you see only a little bit more of the clear pink, set a timer to about 2 minutes and remove from the oven at the end of the 2 minutes. Even the remaining heat in the fish when you turn off the broiler or grill will finish off the cooking to perfection.

Salmon can be grilled on charcoals, gas, or electric. Even set high in the oven on broil it comes out great. Thinner pieces cook very quickly, so keep an eye on them. Brush or spoon on sauces before grilling or broiling.

Teriyaki style sauce -- Good soy sauce, honey, fresh crushed garlic, ginger.
Honey Mustard sauce -- Honey, mustard, touch of soy sauce.
Olive oil and spices -- Good quality olive oil, fresh crushed garlic, salt, fresh ground pepper, optional dill.

Gravlox -- Home style lox

Lox is the name usually given to smoked or cured salmon. Many commercial products are actually cured in salt/sugar and then some smoke flavor added. There are also dried smoked salmon products, and real cold smoked salmon lox. Gravlox is the Scandanavian name for salt cured salmon. It is a delight, a real help with the budget, and easy to make. You can make a lot more gravlox from a fillet of salmon than you would get for the same money in pre-packaged lox from the store.

2 1/2 lbs (1.1 kilo) salmon fillet.
1/3 coarse salt
3 Tablespoons sugar
3 Tablespoons crushed peppercorns
Fresh dill
Fresh Chives
Set both pieces of fish bone side up, remove any remaining bones.
Set one in a non-metal plate, bone side up. If you lack a deep enough plate or dish, use a ziplock bag in a pie dish.
Sprinkle 1/2 the ingredients on top of this side of fish.
Set 2nd piece bone side down on top of the first piece, and sprinkle the other 1/2 of the ingredients on top. Set a plastic or glass dish on top, then something heavy. Place the whole thing in the refigerator. This is easier to keep neat with the ziplock bag.
Remove liquid as it accumulates, rotate pieces for 24-36 hours. The weights will flatten your salmon fillet and make it a nice solid texture for slicing into thin lox.

Or get a home lox maker to make your lox more easily. Why buy a LoxBox when this page tells you how to do it from scratch?

You get a nice polycarbonate box instead of fussing with a pie plate that might overflow with fish brine. That means your refrigerator stays clean and your lox stays fresh.
You get a granite compressor stone that fits inside your loxbox. It's not all that fun to try to figure out how to weight down your plate on top of lox in pie plate and still have room in your fridge. That means your salmon gets safer, easier, more even compression.
You get five PERFECURE™ Pouches. This is the heart of the LoxBox. The Perfecure Pouch is custom-made from a unique, semi-permeable, FDA-approved, food-compatible material that has been specifically chosen to optimize and standardize the osmotic pressure that is the basis of the curing process. The Perfecure Pouch, likewise, protects the delicate flesh of the forming lox from being embedded with particles of salt, pepper and the other herbs and spices used in the curing recipe. It is the Perfecure Pouch that takes both the guesswork and the mess out of lox-making. That means a more uniform, perfect lox than you'll get with ziplock baggies.
You get even more recipes and ideas in the instruction booklet. They even include a salt-free lox recipe!

And the price is right. All this convenience for $29.95 plus shipping! Turn a $5 salmon fillet into a $25 piece of lox. Use the LoxBox twice, and it pays for itself.

TheLoxBox.com The World's First Home Lox-Maker
- $29.95

TheLoxBox.com The World's First Home Lox-Maker! It’s foolproof, easy and economical. You make lox for a fraction of the cost of the market or deli. Lox from the LoxBox is both heart-healthy and anti-arthritic. It's the perfect gift for any home, not expensive, and health conscious.

Buy a LoxBox for homemade gravlox!