Hi, Chef Sandy Krebs here!
If you want home made lox with your bagels and cream cheese on New Year's morning it only takes ten minutes...but you better start today!
Making Lox (or Gravlax or Cured Salmon) is a piece of cake. The initial preparation time takes only a few minutes, but the curing part takes days. I know many people are a bit hinkey about eating “raw” fish, but if this is the way our ancestors preserved fish so that they could keep it for weeks, without refrigeration, we can probably survive it too, especially considering that ours stays refrigerated. The way curing works is the salt draws moisture out of the meat and moisture is needed for bacteria growth. It's excess bacteria that makes meat “bad”. I have attached a Wiki link below if you want to learn more, but suffice it to say the New Year's Eve party the night before is a lot more dangerous than Lox for breakfast on New Year's Day.
The recipe I am giving you is my favorite flavor combo for cured salmon. You can switch up the seasonings in this recipe for different flavors, but the one part you can not switch up is the salt and sugar; that's what does the curing. Try replacing the bay leaves and nutmeg with dill and lemon zest, or anise and crushed red pepper flakes for completely different flavors. Some people prefer to leave the skin on the salmon while curing, but I don't, as the brine (brine is the term used for the salt mixture) does not work it's way through the skin, and you are only curing the fish from one side so it take longer.
Ingredients
1 cup Kosher or Coarse Salt
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 large Yellow Onion – quartered
1 teaspoon ground Nutmeg
A handful of Bay Leaves
2 pound filet of Salmon – skin off
First, find two pans that fit inside one another (like two 9 x 13 pans) and something heavy (like a brick, or a couple of heavy cans of something you have in the cupboard, or the fruitcake you got for Christmas).
Place all the ingredients, except the Salmon, in a food processor. Pulse on and off just a few times, until the mixture is blended, but don't liquify the onion. Line the bottom of the first pan with plastic wrap. Put a thin layer of the mixture over the plastic in the bottom of the pan. Place the salmon filet on top, then pack the rest of mixture around the filet. Loosely place another piece of plastic on top, then place the second pan on top. Put whatever you are using for a weight inside of the top pan and refrigerate. Turn the salmon over once a day, repacking the brine around the fish. The moisture will start to be drawn out of the salmon and the brine will turn liquidy. Don't worry about it; this is what is supposed to be happening. After two or three days you have lox! Just rinse all the brine off under cold water and pat dry. Now you can wrap it tightly with plastic wrap. The lox will keep for two weeks or more in the frig. Slice (as thinly as possible) as much of the filet as you will use at a sitting and wrap the rest tightly and put it back in the frig for later use.
As always, please leave questions or comments and let me know how your Lox turned out.
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