4 Simple Salmon Recipes

Grilled Salmon with Corn and Zucchini Salad, is healthy, delicious, and easy to prepare.
Grilled Salmon with Corn and Zucchini Salad, is healthy, delicious, and easy to prepare.

Salmon - it's easy to prepare, has a unique, rich flavor, and it's healthy for you, too. Whether simply grilled or pan-roasted and served with a squeeze of lemon over the top, or coated in a crunchy crust and baked to perfection, it's one dinner option that you'll want to keep in your weekly rotation.

That's why this week we felt fortunate when Pure Food Fish Market, based out of Seattle's world-famous Pike Place Market, provided us with 8 pounds of delicious salmon to create this week's recipe. What did we come up with?

RELATED: 5 New Ways to Make Salmon


All of the recipes featured here can be made at home for about $30 or less, excluding the cost of small amounts of basic ingredients such as butter, oil, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and other dried herbs and spices.

Grilled Salmon with Corn and Zucchini Salad
(pictured above)

This meal is all about keeping things fresh and simple. The salmon is simply grilled with lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and the corn and zucchini salad makes the most of late summer's bounty.

INGREDIENTS
For the salmon:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 pounds salmon fillets
Salt and pepper, to taste
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 lemon, sliced thinly

For the corn and zucchini salad:

4 ears corn, husked and silk removed
2 medium-sized zucchini, diced finely
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon chopped mint

DIRECTIONS
For the salmon:

Preheat an outdoor grill or cast-iron grill pan on high heat. Brush with 1 tablespoon of the oil to prevent the salmon from sticking.

Coat the salmon on both sides with the remaining oil and season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Place the salmon on the grill skin side down and cook for about 3 minutes. Carefully flip the fish and continue cooking on the other side. Place the lemon slices on top of the fillet and squeeze some of the lemon juice over the top of the fish. Continue cooking until the desired doneness is reached (I like my salmon a bit rare in the middle). Remove from the heat, top with more lemon juice, to taste, and serve immediately.

For the corn and zucchini salad:

Using a sharp knife, remove the corn kernels from the ears. Set aside.

Put the zucchini in a colander with a little salt to drain off excess water.

Heat a large pan over medium-high heat and melt the butter. Add the corn kernels and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Pat the zucchini dry and add to the pan, stirring to incorporate. Cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Add the mint, season with salt and pepper, to taste, and stir to combine.

Remove from the heat and serve immediately. This salad can also be served at room temperature or even cold.

Recipe Details
Servings: 4

RELATED: What Fish Should You Be Eating Now for Flavor, Health, and the Environment?

Foil-Baked Salmon with Mango, Chile, and Lime

At the end of a long workday, my favorite kind of recipe to make is one that requires minimal attention and prep. This salmon recipe is one such example. I let a side of quinoa simmer away while this was in the oven, and if you like, you can make some salad as the salmon cooks, too. Getting dinner on the table easily is all about multitasking.

Click here to see the Foil-Baked Salmon with Mango, Chile, and Lime Recipe.

Black Pepper and Sea Salt Salmon

Growing up, seafood was best made with as little as possible. The importance was always to taste the fish itself, rather than the sauce you drowned it in. I still abide by this philosophy in my kitchen, extending it from seafood to meat to produce. This recipe uses simple ingredients to enhance the natural flavors of the fish and packs in a lot of kick from the pepper. (I served it with a cold pasta salad, made with rotini pasta, a little bit of olive oil, crumbled feta cheese, and cannellini beans.)

Click here to see the Black Pepper and Sea Salt Salmon Recipe.

Lightly Smoked Salmon

OK, this salmon isn't really lightly smoked (there's not even wood chips involved in this recipe), but doesn't it just bother you when someone says grilled salmon and it really was sitting on top of a piece of aluminum foil? Maybe it's just me, but I hope you don't hold it against me for using the term here, because in essence, that's what happened to this salmon. The open flames of the grill may not have touched the salmon directly, but they created enough smoke to slowly and tenderly cook the fillet so that it turns out moist and flavorful.

Click here to see the Lightly Smoked Salmon Recipe.


-Will Budiaman, The Daily Meal

Click here to see 15 Salmon Recipes That Won't Make You Yawn