Recipe Review: Gravlax

My Mom and I have always wanted to try to make cold smoked salmon or cured salmon. I saw Chuck Hughes' holiday special recently where he made Gravlax. It looked easy and very delicious. Well this weekend we gave it a try. 

It turned out so good. The recipe is very simple. You place coarse sea salt and dill in a food processor and chop until the dill is incorporated into the salt. At this point the salt smelled so good. I am going to make some dill salt just to have on hand. It smelled like pickles. I am getting side tracked. Then you mix brown sugar into the salt mixture. Then you cover the salmon with the cure and drizzle with vodka. You do need a lot of counter space to work with the salmon. I used a 9 x 13 Pyrex casserole and that was too small. You really need to use a couple of baking sheets. It is hard to move the salmon once the sugar and salt cure is on it. Once covered in the cure you put the salmon pieces together and cover in plastic wrap. Then you move it to the refrigerator and weight it down with some cans or jars. I used some pickle jars that were in the frig. You let it cure for 24 hours, then remove it, rinse and dry; then slice it. See very easy!

For the recipe go to the Cooking Channel website or [Click Here].

We used the Gravlax to make Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Sandwiches. They were delicious. I haven't made Chuck's Mustard Sauce yet. I plan to do that today. I also plan to use the rest of the salmon to make Salmon Eggs Benny and maybe a Lomi Lomi Salad. I will let you know how that goes. All in all this was a great recipe. I will definitely make it again when salmon is on sale. So go check out Chuck's recipe. 

Below are some of my photos of the process.