Too Simple to Believe It Teriyaki Salmon | Recipe
A simple teriyaki salmon dish that is so buttery, smoky, and delicious you won’t be able to tell that it is made under 30 minutes all in the oven. Shhh…it is our secret.
Here is the printable recipe.
Grocery List (2 servings)
Feel free to skip the rice and the broccolini if you want to substitute it with your own vegetables and starch choices.
- baking parchment paper
- aluminum foil (optional)
- salt/pepper for seasoning
Vegetables/Protein
- 2 serving of salmon filets (about 2 oz each)
- 2 cups of chopped broccolini
Sauce
- 1/2 cup of teriyaki sauce (I used Trader Joe’s Soyaki Sauce)
- 2 tbsp. of hoisin sauce
- 1 tbsp. of brown sugar (can subst. with white sugar, but adjust to taste if so)
- 2 tsp. of minced garlic
- 2 tsp of minced ginger (remove skin)
Quinoa/Wild Rice Medley
- 1/2 cup of Quinoa
- 1/2 cup of Korean 10 grains wild mix rice (can substitute with any mixture of wild rice)
- 1 1/2 cup of water
The Correct Cooking Method
Prepping/Marinading the salmon
The best way to save $$$ when buying salmon is to buy them from Costco. If you do so, prep your filet accordingly to the following instructions; otherwise skip to the next step. Divide the salmon filet into several servings and put each serving (~2oz each) into individual ziplock bags (gallon/quart size, you will see why). Reserve two servings and put the rest away in the freezer, so there will be more for next time.
Measured all of the sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Pour the sauce mixture into the salmon ziplock bag and let it marinade for at least 30 minutes. Feel free to made the sauce directly in a ziplock bag as well or in a mixing bowl, whichever works best for you.
Cook rice
Sorry this instruction requires using a rice cooker. However, if there is no rice cooker, there is a website full of instruction on how to make rice on the stove top. ;)
Place all of the quinoa/rice medley into a rice cooker. Soak the rice for at least 15 minutes, prefer 30 minutes, to soften the quinoa texture. Once soaked, rinse the rice medley at least three times to remove any excess starch. Pour in the corrected amount of water needed, about 1 1/2 cups for 1 cups of quinoa/rice medley. Place in the rice cooker and cook it on mix setting (normal rice cook setting works fine too, don’t worry).
Once the rice is cooked, fluff it with a fork or a rice paddle.
Prep the poaching pouch/misc things
The salmon is marinating. The rice is soaking/cooking, so now what…Well lets prep all the poaching pouch supplies. Cut up parchment paper using scissor into rectangles with length double the size of your salmon filet.
Cover the baking tray with aluminum foil. Can skip this step if you feel like cleaning your baking tray.
Toss the broccolini with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread the seasoned broccolini onto the baking tray.
Grab the salmon and place each pieces onto the pre-cut parchment paper. Pour on about 2 tbsp of sauce or more if you like and wrap up the pouch like the image above. Once the pouch is made, place onto the baking pan with the broccolini.
Letting the oven do its things
Did I forgot to tell you to pre-heat the oven…sigh. Well anyway, preheat oven to 400 degree Fahrenheit, which is about 204.444 degree Celsius (Thanks God there is Google :P).
Once the oven is preheated, place the tray with the salmon and the broccolini into the oven. Bake at 400 degree Fahrenheit for 20 minutes or until the salmon is cooked or become flaky. Cook salmon can be easily separate out with a fork.
Time to Earn What You Deserve
Plate the cooked salmon, broccolini, and rice medley beautifully onto a place. Drizzle on some of the sauce form the poached pouch onto the salmon and sprinkle on some toasted sesame seeds (black pepper works too).
Hidden Stories Behind the Creative Recipe
Growing up, I actually never get to experience what raw salmon taste like. My mom always make baked salmon that she seasoned with the Costco Steak seasoning. I know, the steak seasoning is for steak, but we Asian use it for everything, from fish to chicken. Can you believe it? Trust me steak seasoned salmon is super delicious especially the crunchy oily salmon skin. Something about the steak seasoning makes everything so tasty. The spices blend creates this nice savory aroma that makes your mouth salivate when the smell touches your noise. On top of that, there is always the perfect amount of salty added to the meat.
Anyway, steak seasoned baked salmon is my to go recipe until I tried teriyaki salmon at the a Japanese restaurant and boy does that changed my world. The sweet and salty flavor of the tangy sauce on the salmon balances out the buttery oil of the salmon that melt right when it touches your tongue. One of a kind simple dish that is hard to resist and very healthy too.
This dish sounds simple, but it was hard to recreate. The sauce needs to have a balance of sweetness and salty flavor while having a thick consistency. I have tried all the pre-made teriyaki sauce out there and can’t never get it thicken enough with the right flavor balance. Until one day, I discovered that adding hoisin sauce not only thicken the sauce as it boils, but also give the dish that sweet, tangy, and salty flavor that resemble the restaurant teriyaki sauce.
