Well, “favorite way to cook salmon” might be overstating things a bit. I love salmon pretty much every way I have had it. Especially if you are talking about wild caught salmon. Maybe my favorite is salmon on the grill with just some salt, pepper, and lemon. But aside from that this might be my favorite.
Time for a little secret… this isn’t an original recipe. OK, it could be original as I did modify it from the initial source but I guess we can say it is heavily, heavily influenced from this recipe I found on the Bachan’s site: Hot & Spicy Slow Baked Salmon
Disclosure: This post is monetized with affiliate links. If you buy something through them I earn a commission which helps support this site and lets me buy more meat so I can write about it.
What should we talk about first before we get cooking? Salmon or Bachan’s sauce??? Let’s start with salmon.
I am a huge, huge fan of wild caught salmon as opposed to farmed salmon. The flavor and texture difference between the two is immense and when at all possible I opt for wild caught salmon.
I used wild caught salmon from two different sources for this recipe:
Where to buy wild caught salmon
The left four pieces of salmon are sockeye salmon from Sea To Table. Sea To Table sources fish from different parts of the country, flash freezes it, and ships it to your door. The salmon is all from Alaska and is certified as sustainable by Seafood Watch. Sea To Table offers individual pieces of fish or they also have some curated boxes (I got the Oh My Omega box with sockeye, king salmon, tuna, and black cod). You can use code CARNIVORE to save $20 on orders over $150 as well.
If you want to see more about Sea To Table and their fish here is an unboxing video I did:
On the right is a piece of king salmon and a piece of coho salmon from Catch Sitka Seafood. Catch Sitka Seafood ships, as you might guess from the name, straight from Sitka, AK. Again, they only deal with sustainably caught seafood straight from Alaska. Their salmon is amazing but they also have Alaskan spot prawns, halibut, smoked fish, and more. You can buy a single curated box or sign up for a subscription and save 10%. Also you can save $15 on your first box of $125 or more with code CARNIVORE.
What is Bachan’s sauce?
Bachan’s is a Japanese barbecue sauce but that description doesn’t do it justice. This sauce definitely isn’t a traditional bbq sauce with tomato, molasses, pepper, spices, etc. but it is more of a teriyaki type sauce. But better. It isn’t sickeningly sweet or too watery or anything like that. It is pretty much the perfect consistency and taste.
They have four different varieties: Original, spicy, yuzu, and gluten free. All of them are excellent. I love grilling some wings with some Spiceology Maui Wowee seasoning and then tossing them in the hot and spicy sauce. The original is excellent on grilled chicken breast, drizzled over rice, or on top some stir fried noodles. I just got the bottle of the Yuzu sauce and haven’t used it yet but it tastes excellent. Get your Bachan’s sauce ordered today so you can use it for whatever you want but especially for this excellent salmon recipe I am going to share with you.
My Favorite Salmon Recipe: Bachan’s Hot and Spicy Slow Baked Salmon
OK, here you go. I am not going to copy the whole recipe here but you can go look at it yourself: Bachan’s Hot and Spicy Slow Baked Salmon
Like almost every recipe I use I just use the actual recipe as a starting point and modify it from there. Sometimes I don’t have all the ingredients, sometimes I am just not a fan of certain ingredients and want to change it up a bit. In this case I didn’t have any lemons. I thought I had some but my wife decided to make some lemon poppyseed scones. And 2 cloves of garlic seemed like a bit much so I cut it down to one. Here are the ingredients they call for:
¼cup neutral oil
½ cup Bachan’s Hot and Spicy Japanese Barbecue Sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ lemon, thinly sliced
1½ lb skinless salmon filet
thinly sliced scallions
I used 1 clove of garlic, didn’t use the lemon slices (I would have used them if I had them), and skipped the scallions since I don’t like them. And since the kids don’t really care for the hot and spicy sauce I used the original.
Normally I wouldn’t bother skinning the salmon filets if I was cooking them on the grill or broiling them but since this is a wet cooking method it wouldn’t get nice and crisp. It would stay wet and flabby. So I went ahead and skinned the filets.
Then I poured all the sauce over the top and threw it in the 275 degree oven for about 30 minutes:
I was initially skeptical about the slow baking method since I usually grill salmon but cooking slow with a decent amount of liquid gives you a nice safety net when cooking. Salmon is done when it is around 125-140. With a hot and fast cooking method like grilling it is pretty easy to overshoot that temp. But since it is only a 275 degree oven and you have the oil and liquid in the pan you have probably a 10 minute window where you can pull the fish and still have it in that temperature range. I guess you could almost consider this oven poaching???
If I was cooking this for dinner I would serve it over rice but since I was having it for lunch I figured it would be great on a salad (maybe the only time you will hear me use the “s” word on this website):
I drizzled a bit more of the sauce on the salmon and dug in. The flavor of the salmon definitely comes through and isn’t overpowered by any of the other ingredients. You can definitely still taste the Bachan’s sauce and garlic though. The sauce is a great compliment to the flavor of the fish. My favorite was the piece of king salmon. It had a more salmony flavor than the others but the overall flavor wasn’t as strong if that makes any sense. I also loved the more tender texture of the king salmon. All the others were amazing as well but the king was just a small step ahead.
So get yourself some wild caught Alaskan salmon from Sea To Table or Catch Sitka Seafood, pick up some sauce from Bachan’s, and give this recipe a shot!
