Teriyaki Salmon and a Snow Storm

Well, it looks like another snowpocalypse (Winter Storm Ion) is upon us with heavy snow and sub zero temps for the next few days…maybe I won’t have to go back to work on Monday, or ever!  A girl can dream…Anyway, what does someone like me do on a night like this?  Make Teriyaki Salmon of course!  I had a huge hankerin’ for this today when I went to the store to stock up on the rations before the storm hit (actually we were out of everything so this was more of a coincidence).  Grocery stores on the morning before a big snow storm remind me of black friday and are equally insane, but when the weatherman is using terms like “thunder snow” people do tend to get a little…psychotic.

I make this dish a lot, in the summer my husband catches lake trout in Lake Michigan and this is always my go to preparation.  I was going to say that lake trout and salmon are basically the same kind of fish because they look and taste exactly the same however my husband just informed me that if I make such an ignorant remark, fishermen from all over will come out of the woodwork (literally) and beat me with both a dead lake trout and a dead salmon until I know the difference.

So this is where is gets good…the marinade.  You can always make a dynamite teriyaki marinade from scratch but someone has already made the best teriyaki marinade in the world and put it in this bottle for me so I’m gonna go ahead and use that…

It’s called Island Teriyaki made by Soy Vay…it has all natural ingredients and no junk!  (I hate junk).  I like this marinade because of it’s sweetness, it has pineapple juice in it!  They also make a teriyaki that’s more on the savory side but this one has my heart and always will.  I have seen this at my local grocery store, Whole Foods, and Target so it’s definitely making the rounds out there!

Next, I arrange the salmon in a shallow glass casserole dish, you want your pieces to have some room around them but not too much or you’ll end up having to use too much marinade to cover them.


Now here comes the REALLY tricky part…you pour the marinade out of the jar and onto the salmon.


Ta Da!!!

I use about half the bottle for three decent pieces of salmon. (A ziploc freezer bag also works well for this if you don’t want to use a casserole.)  Cover it and stick it in the fridge anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.  Salmon is a hearty fish so it holds up well to longer marinade times unlike a cod or a tilapia which will actually start to cook if the marinade is acidic enough.

After the salmon has been marinating for the desired time frame, remove the salmon and place on a foil lined baking sheet and throw in a 350° F oven for about 15-18 minutes. Make sure not to overcook it or everyone will yell at you.  The marinade on the foil will start to get charred but this is perfectly normal.  I like to use the foil lined baking sheet for skin on salmon because you will find that when removing the salmon from the baking sheet, the fish pulls away effortlessly while the skin stays secured to the foil.  You could definitely cook the salmon in the same dish you used for marinade if you’ve got skinless fillets.

Once the salmon comes out of the oven, it will take no effort at all to separate the meat from the skin using a spatula.


I paired our salmon tonight with simple sautéed spinach and saffron rice because I love that stuff.  My husband was in heaven…and so were my boys!  Success!    



So as you can see, there’s no real recipe here because it’s so easy that you don’t need one…now I know what you’re all thinking, “she’s a fraud, she’s a food phony!” but that’s okay. We will make some other things and I will include recipes I promise!  I REALLY had to get accustomed to the practice of documenting my “recipes” because it wasn’t something that I was used to, the whole following a recipe thing.  That is what’s so great about cooking (but not baking!)…when you cook, you can modify the recipe to your tastes for the most part by adding ingredients you like and omitting ingredients you don’t or that someone may be allergic to. Baking obviously isn’t that forgiving, it’s more of an exact science (I learned that the hard way).

I hope you try this out and let me know what you think!  The snow is really coming down now…maybe I will bake something tomorrow…and if you’re in Winter Storm Ion’s path I hope you have enough wine to hold you over.

Cheers!
The Good Cooker









2 thoughts on “Teriyaki Salmon and a Snow Storm”

  2. Lauren Maes says:
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    Hi Courtney! I did get this salmon at WF but I've also found great fillets at Target. I always buy fresh and as far as the variety, I will buy wild Alaskan salmon if I can find it but a sustainable farm raised variety can be just as good! This was farm-raised Icelandic, I was sold! What you will find is that a wild salmon tends to be slightly leaner than farm raised so the cooking time may be slightly less, must be due to those wild ones running away from bears or something.

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