Gravlax
Cooking

Gravlax


People are often impressed when they learn I make my own gravlax, the salt-cured salmon from Scandinavia. Here's the thing: gravlax is easy to make. It's a bang-for-the-buck food. You invest a small amount of time and end up with something that's flavorful, attractive, and impressive. You don't need much to feed a crowd (despite what a butcher once told me) because it's so flavorful you cut it into very thin slices. A pound will easily feed ten to twelve people. Even better, you have to make it in advance. I often make it for brunches and serve it with Eggs Benedict or on brioche with creme fraiche.

I made some recently and figured I'd write up the technique. Curing your own meat might make you nervous, but this is a fairly simple example. I've never had a problem with it.

Making gravlax entails a few basic steps: buy the fish, brush it with alcohol, apply the cure, and cure the fish. That's it. I don't even use a recipe anymore, since those four steps are easy enough to remember.

  1. Buy the fish - You want good-quality salmon with the skin on. Sam recommends sashimi-grade salmon, but I've never found that necessary. You want the skin on for two reasons. One, it's easier to cut the final product. Second, as our friend Pam pointed out when I first learned to make gravlax, the skin is rich with flavorful oil. As you press out the water, you want the oil in the skin to be pushed into the flesh.
  2. Brush with alcohol - This step is probably optional, but it's a good way to help kill all the bacteria on the flesh. You want something with high alcohol. I use vodka while Pam likes gin, which she complements with crushed juniper berries in the cure. Brush liberally on both the flesh and skin sides.
  3. Apply the cure - Combine equal parts kosher salt and sugar (about 1/4 cup each) as well as seasonings. Dill is traditional, but I like Pam's idea of juniper berries. For my most recent batch, I just used sugar and salt. If you use salt alone, it can "burn" the fish in spots.
    Vigorously rub the cure over the entire fish, rubbing more over the thicker spots. You can't apply too much; eventually the osmotic pressure hits equilibrium.
  4. Cure the fish - Place the fish, skin side down, on a rimmed cookie sheet (I apply the cure in the pan and just leave the rest of the cure in it). Cover loosely but well with saran wrap. Put another cookie sheet on top, and put as much weight as you can on the top sheet. I always use an 8-lb. weight and a 2-lb. weight plus whatever heavy items are in my refrigerator. Leave it for a week in your refrigerator. It will leak a lot of liquid on the first day, progressively less on following days. Some people like to turn the fish over every day, but I find it's too much of a bother.

Slicing the gravlax is tricky. Our friend Dave (Pam's husband) suggests putting it into the freezer for half an hour, a common technique for cutting meat thinly. Put the gravlax skin side down on a cutting board, and position your knife at a shallow angle. 20°, 30°, something like that. Cut at this angle down to the skin. You'll slice off a big piece that you can dice for omelettes. Keeping your knife at the same angle, make the thinnest slices you can. Eat some periodically to make sure it's not poisonous. If you used dill in the cure, it will add a pretty green frilly edge to the slices.





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