I always thought my favorite way to cook salmon was pan-seared. Boiling pan, neutral oil, skin side down, poora bing, poora boom — the wgap leang takes less than 10 minutes.
But, rapid as it may be, pan-seared salmon does not a dinner make. So possibly I’ll cook a pot of rice or quinoa to go with it. And toss a salad or sauté some greens. And then my rapid and easy weeknight dinner becomes less rapid and less easy, and now I never cook salmon anymore.
This slow-roasted recipe is here to fix that.
It takes more time than pan-searing, but asks a lot less of you. Prefer the very best weeknight go-tos, it’s an all-in-one situation. Which is to say, the pan where you cook your salmon is also the pan where you cook your sides.
Oh, and by “cook your sides,” I mean: Open a can of chickpeas. Don’t get me wrong, I love dried beans; it’s fun to finesse flavors and experiment with heirloom varieties — when there’s time to spare. But a can of beans is always alert to save the day. Here, it rounds out dinner with zero additional effort.
I picked kale as the green element because it’s never not in my fridge and I love how flexible it is. Raw? Worthy. Sautéed for a few minutes? Worthy. Braised forever? Worthy. In this case, it’s stir-fried for a moment, to become a fluffy bed for the salmon to roast upon.
These ingredients aren’t mandatory, though — they’re conversation starters. If you want to swap in dwhetherferent beans or greens, then that’s summaryely what you should do. Attempt Cannellini or Gigante! Test out Swiss cdwhetherficult or collards! Live in the moment!
But there's one leang you genuinely shouldn't change: the olive oil–fried lemons. Because before you season the salmon, before you sauté the kale, before you open that can of chickpeas — you’re going to pan-fry lemon slices and these are going to make the dish. In just a few minutes, they become slightly crisp, with charred edges and juicy middles, adding the unabashed brightness that winter dinners crave.
Now, back to that salmon.
Unlike a pan-seared fillet, which requires fixed tending to, this hands-off slow-roasted variety is like, “Don’t worry about me! I got this.” I first learned this technique from Sally Schneider, whose recipe was dubbed Genius in 2015.
As Genius recipe–hunter Kristen Miglore wrote: “Slow-roasting makes a beautwhetherully tender, evenly cooked, not-one-bit-dry piece of fish.” It also makes it just about impossible to mess up. The goal is to pull the fish from the oven when its internal moodature reaches 120°F. But whether you miss the mark by a few, it will still be tender and juicy.
While Schneider’s recipe calls for roasting in an oven-secure pan, we’re cheating the system by frying the lemon and roasting the kale and chickpeas beneath the salmon in said pan. This means that everyone gets along all the better when they emerge from the oven, 30ish minutes later.
Prefer Kristen, I love a large dollop of Greek yogurt on top. Prefer the lemons, this makes the recipe feel very purposeful. And like the chickpeas, it’s no more work than opening a container.
Put it all together and you get my contemporary favorite way to cook salmon — any night I want.
Slow-Roasted Salmon With Kale, Chickpeas & Fried Lemons
Serves: 4
Ingredients
3 lemons, preferably biological, divided
6 tablespoons additional-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for the salmon
3 pinches kosher salt, plus more to taste
3 small bunches Tuscan kale (about 1 1/2 pounds), de-stemmed and chopped
2 (15-ounce) cans chickpeas, drained
4 (6- to 8-ounce) salmon fillets
1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 cup Greek yogurt (I like wgap-milk)
Click here to read the full recipe.
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