Homemade Dill-cured salmon
Food Styling Mari Loewen, Photography Jerry Grajewski
For a spectacular holiday breakfast or on a bagel everyday, learning to cure your own salmon is a skill you should master and its so easy!
Ingredients
1 (2 pound) centre-cut piece salmon
½ cup sugar
½ cup kosher salt
1 bunch fresh dill, coarsely chopped, plus more for garnish
Preparation
To cure salmon, rinse and pat salmon dry. In medium bowl, combine sugar and salt. Lay a large piece of plastic wrap onto a cookie sheet, large enough to wrap your salmon after preparing.
Place salmon onto plastic in baking sheet, and generously sprinkle entire salmon, front and back, using up all the sugar and salt; sprinkle generously with dill. Wrap tightly with wrap on the baking sheet, but then add several more layers of wrap. The salmon will cure in teh salt and sugar so you don’t want any to escape out of the plastic.
Do weigh down the wrapped salmon with another heavy dish or pan, or even a large flour bag filled with flour. Place in refrigerator to sure for 2 days, turning over after 24 hours. Check salmon after 24 hours; it should now be nearly transparent and candy-like gorgeous, and easy to slice thinly. Slice very, very thinly to serve.
Keep in refrigerator, tightly wrapped for up to 5 days.