Happy first day of Hanukkah to all those celebrating! 🕎 We have a special treat for you today: Gravad Lax, or Gravlax, a cured salmon that is just perfect for the holiday season.
The most beautiful salmon filet you can lay your hands on is packed in a mix of salt, sugar and dill, rests for two days and emerges cured and silky with an amazing flavor that is just begging to be sliced as thinly as you can manage and piled on a carb of your choice! If you start making this Gravlax today, you can be enjoying it with crispy latkes in 48 hours. Or piled on a bagel. Pumpernickel would be an excellent option as well! Whatever you want to carve it for, you will absolutely love this! It’s very impressive (Oh this? Pshaw, sooo easy! ), feeds a crowd (but you can scale the recipe down if your celebrations are smaller this year) and it’s really almost impossible to get wrong. I wrangled this recipe from Kirsty and my friend Caterina because I was in awe every time she served it and it’s so delicious!
We always serve it with our g&b Mustard Dill Sauce (Hovmästarsås), but I’m sure a dollop of sour cream would also go very well indeed.
Chag Sameach!
xoxo Donata
Ingredients
(6 servings)
750 g (26 oz) high quality fresh salmon filet with skin on
85 g (3 ¼ oz) sugar
120 g (4 oz) salt
8 tbs chopped dill
1 tsp crushed white pepper
Preparation
Scale the salmon and remove the small bones (or have your fishmonger do this for you as it’s rather messy!), but leave the skin on. Mix the salt, sugar, pepper and dill together.
Make a few cuts into the skin so that the your curing mix can penetrate from all sides. Lay out two long pieces of clingfilm (double the length of your salmon filet).
Spread half of your salt mixture onto the clingfilm, approximately in the shape of your salmon. Place the salmon on the salt and then pack the rest of the salt mix evenly on top.
Wrap the salmon tightly in the clingfilm. Place a weighted (cans work very well) cutting board on top of the salmon filet and let it marinate at room temperature for 2–4 hours.
Then refrigerate for 24−48 hours, turning the salmon filet a few times.
When ready to serve, rinse the salmon in cold water to wash the coating off. Pat dry.
Slice thinly at an angle without cutting into the skin.
Serve with our Mustard Dill Sauce, lemon slices and plenty of fresh dill.
