Baked Pink Salmon with Potatoes in Foil
Fifty minutes in the oven is the potatoes' time, not the fish's. Pink salmon would need twenty, which is why the potatoes are cut into thin rounds: only that way do both come out ready together. Thick slices mean overdried fish over raw potatoes, and there is no fixing that afterwards.
Pink salmon is dry in itself, and the sour cream and cheese here aren't decoration but a source of fat. They run down onto the steaks from above and keep them juicy for the full fifty minutes — that is why the order of the layers is strict: potatoes, fish, onion, sour cream, tomato, cheese.
It is cooked in individual parcels rather than on one tray. A foil parcel holds its own steam around its own portion, and its edges are crimped airtight: one small hole and the juices run out onto the tray while the portion dries out.
The side dish bakes inside the parcel here. The same foil and the same sour cream and cheese, over a fish that needs the moisture more and with nothing else in the dish, is Alaska pollock baked in foil with vegetables and cheese, and the same fish family taken to a crust in a pan is salmon in cream sauce in a pan.
Caloric content: 148kcal
Prepare the ingredients
Cut the fish into steaks
Cut the potatoes into rounds
Make the foil pots
Add the steaks
Add the onion and sour cream
Add the tomatoes
Sprinkle with cheese
Close the parcels
Bake for 50 minutes
Serve in the foil
Notes
- Use heavy foil. Thin foil tears on the folds of the "pot", and the seam comes apart while it is still in the oven.
- New potatoes aren't peeled. They are washed with a brush — the skin is thin and holds the rounds together.
- A spoonful of oil on the bottom of each parcel. Without it the bottom layer of potatoes sticks to the foil.
- Steaks of equal thickness. Pieces of different thickness in one parcel cook at different rates.
- Judge doneness by the potatoes. They have to turn soft; by that moment the fish is guaranteed to be done.
- Any hard cheese will do instead of mozzarella. Mozzarella gives stretch, hard cheese gives a crust.
Questions and Answers
How long should pink salmon with potatoes be baked?
About fifty minutes, and that is the potatoes' time, not the fish's. Judge doneness by the potatoes being soft; by that moment the fish is guaranteed to be done.
Why are the potatoes cut into thin rounds?
So that both come out ready together. Thick slices mean overdried fish over raw potatoes, and there is no fixing that afterwards.
Why does pink salmon need sour cream and cheese?
Pink salmon is dry. The sour cream and cheese here aren't decoration but a source of fat: they run down onto the steaks from above and keep them juicy for the full fifty minutes.
Why cook in individual parcels rather than on one tray?
A parcel holds its own steam around its own portion. The edges are crimped airtight: one small hole and the juices run out onto the tray while the portion dries out.
Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.