Sous-Vide Salmon with Lemon-Dill Creme Fraiche

This is my very first experiment with sous vide cooking. Because it involves, science, technology and innovation, I’m all over it! Joe got me an Anova Sous-Vide circulator for Father’s Day (with some strong hinting on my part). So, I decided to try one of the recipes on the Anova site for my first foray into this cooking which feels to me like part cooking and part pchem lab (and that makes me tingle all over).

Brine and Package the Salmon

salmon_sous-vide

Salmon filets vacuum sealed and ready for the water bath

The first step is to brine the salmon filets and vacuum pack them (the vide part of sous-vide, mais non?).

4 cups water

1/4 cup kosher salt

Dissolve the salt in the water, add some ice. Rinse salmon filets and add to brine. Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes. Remove from brine, rinse and pat dry. Place each filet separately into a vacuum seal bag with a little olive oil. Vacuum seal the open end of the bag with a vacuum sealer.

Preparing the Water Bath

Water bath pre-heating

Any pot with enough capacity for the food you want to cook works. I used a large stock pot (which may be a little overkill for two pieces of salmon). Clamped the Anova holder to the side and placed the device into the water. The recipe called for a temperature of 125 F for rare and 135 F for medium as that’s how Joe likes his salmon prepared (yeah, I get Partner-of-the-Year award). I set it for 135 and started the pre-heating process. The water circulated actively but with less turbulence than I had pictured.

There is a free Anova app for the iPhone which I (of course) downloaded. You can just call up the recipe and hit “play” and it pre-heats and times the cook for you. However, I found that, since I wanted to go with a higher temperature, I just needed to manually time the cook. Not a big burden there. I cooked the salmon for 30 minutes, then transferred to a hot non-stick skillet with a little olive oil to crisp the skin. At Joe’s request, next time, I’ll also crisp the meat side.

Les Accoutrements

I also made the Lemon-Dill Creme Fraiche and cold cucumber salad that was suggested:

Lemon-Dill Creme Fraiche

1 cup creme fraiche or full fat plain Greek yogurt (that’s what I used)

1/4 cup loosely packed chopped fresh dill

Zest and juice of one lemon

Mix together and chill.

Cold Cucumber Salad

1 English cucumber, sliced

1/4 vidalia onion, thinly sliced

3 T red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper

Place all ingredients together in large zip-lock bag and season with salt and pepper. Toss and refrigerate

So, it turned out pretty well. Next time, I’ll sear both sides of the salmon. But, the meat was properly done, very flaky and didn’t need any additional seasoning due to the brining. I paired this with our WineShop At Home Broadmoor 2023 White Trails. I’ll call this first sous-vide experience a success.