Lemon Garlic Salmon

This Lemon Garlic Salmon is loaded with flavor! Cook until tender and drizzle with a rich and flavorful lemon butter sauce.

You love salmon and are looking for a new way of preparing it? try that Lemon Garlic Salmon! Tender, flaky fish is draped in a lemony butter sauce that tastes like pure gold. It’s rich and flavorful, adding a kick of flavor to every bite. Adding a sauce makes this salmon so much tastier than cooking it with lemon or even just spritzing it with juice. You can mix the sauce in just 5 minutes!

Find a good piece of salmon

Here’s a tricky thing about this Lemon Garlic Salmon: The quality of salmon you find at the store varies widely. Lower quality salmon can taste very fishy and have a mushy texture or have a lot of white stuff when cooked (see below). Here are some things to consider when buying salmon:

• Look for wild salmon. Wild fish caught in your country is generally a sustainable choice. (There are also quality options at well-regulated farms; see Seafood Watch’s consumer guide.) Buy it either fresh at the fish counter or frozen.
• Coho is a good choice; Avoid Atlantic salmon. We tend to like coho salmon for its mild flavor: price-wise, it’s a good, middle-of-the-road option. Sure, the king salmon is fantastic, but it’s pricey. Avoid Atlantic salmon as they are usually farmed.

Perfect Lemon Garlic Salmon: salt first!

Has cooked salmon and the white stuff ever reached the top? It’s perfectly safe to eat, but it’s not that appetizing to look at! It’s a coagulated protein that infiltrates what’s called the surface albumin. The amount of albumin varies greatly between fish, so it’s not something you can control. (Learn more here.)

Here’s one way to avoid the white stuff in this Lemon Garlic Salmon: Salt the salmon first! It also keeps the fish perfectly moist and helps the salmon come back to room temperature, allowing it to cook more evenly. Here’s what to do:

• Prepare a saline solution. Mix 4 cups of water and 3 tablespoons of salt to make a brine solution.
• Put the fish in the water for 15 minutes. Just put the fish in the water for 15 minutes. You can do it in time to preheat your oven: no time wasted!

Methods of cooking salmon

The lemon butter sauce adds flavor to the Lemon Garlic Salmon so you can cook the fish however you like! Here are our top ways to cook this fish:

• Cooked: Baked salmon is a simple method that always works.
• Goal : Our favorite method is grilled salmon because it’s so quick and easy!
• Stove : Seared salmon is quick, too: It requires a little more technique but yields a deliciously crispy surface.

Make the lemon butter sauce

While the salmon is cooking, mix up the lemon butter sauce! It only takes 5 ingredients and 5 minutes to assemble. It is an intensely flavored sauce intended for use in small quantities. Small things have a big impact! Here are the 5 ingredients you need:

• Salted butter
• Garlic
• lemon juice and zest
• Salt
• Parsely

Simply heat the garlic in the butter for 1 minute, then add the lemon, salt and parsley. As simple as that! It adds tremendous flavor and you can use it on any type of fish or chicken.

More salmon recipes

Salmon is fantastic for easy weeknight meals. Here are some popular cooking methods: