Sesame Crusted Salmon Rice Bowls
this is my new favorite way to make salmon.
Can’t say I LOVE salmon. I LIKE salmon - especially in it’s raw form. But if you cook dinner many nights a week, like me, you too need to rotate the proteins to keep it interesting. My toddler really likes salmon. And when he’s willing to wolf down a bowl of anything, we all basically go full tilt on said food. Here’s my new way of making salmon that I’m actually looking forward to making again and again.
Sesame Crusted Salmon Rice Bowls
The base of these bowls is rice. Whatever rice you like is great, but I think sushi rice is best. I do not (yet) know how to make great sushi rice. So I either add a few orders of it with our takeout the night before or I pop down to my local Japanese restaurant and order a few sides to go. While you’re there you can pick up a seaweed salad for the bowls. Here’s what I’m putting lately in the bowls:
Sushi rice
Sesame Crusted Salmon (more on that later)
Avocado
Seaweed salad
Pickled vegetables a.k.a. Do chua (it’s the tasty pickled veg you get on a bahn mi)
Any roasted vegetables like broccoli
Cilalnto
Spicy mayo (mayo + sriracha + lime juice)
The Salmon
Go to the fish counter and ask for 4 (or however many you are) six ounce filets of salmon with the skin removed. Six ounces is a large portion and four ounces is a quite small portion for reference. Whatever type of salmon you choose is totally up to you and I’ll leave the opinion piece about wild vs. farmed to someone else. I’ll just add that if you go with farmed often, it’s worth purchasing from somewhere (whole foods regulates theirs) who has some standards around their vendor’s farming practices.
Marinate the salmon overnight (a few hours works too) in: soy sauce, garlic and ginger grated on the microplane, a touch of toasted sesame oil, and sriracha if you like heat.
When ready to cook: Heat the oven to 425°. Line a sheet pan with parchment.
Beat an egg white in a shallow bowl. Pour half white sesame seeds, half black sesame seeds in a different shallow bowl.
Roll salmon in the egg white. Then lay it in the sesame seeds, coating all sides. Place each salmon filet on the prepared sheet pan. Bake for 13-16 minutes, until the salmon is cooked through. You can peek at the middle with a sharp knife or even a fork.
Assemble the rice bowls.
What I’m Loving This Week:
Gotham Greens: I’ve been a big fan of their lettuces for a long time. they grow everything hydropioncally so it doesn’t matter that they are not labeled “organic” because the growing environment is so controlled there are no bugs or pests. It also creates a super clean, super crisp lettuce. They recently sent me a beautiful gift box with their new dips, sauces and some Gotham Greens swag. This really excite my household. I’ve met the people behind the brand, on a tour of their facilities and I can tell you they are actual human beings and very very nice. For me, that adds to the reason I reach for their product over others. If you’re local to Gowanus, Brooklyn: they grow a large amount of their product on top of the Whole Foods on Third Street.
Canyon Crow Home: Many moons ago, I thought I wanted to start my own catering company just for photo shoots as a result of eating so much mediocre catering on photo shoots. I still would love to do that in theory - it would be incredibly creatively fulfilling for me. I did cater a few shoots and found out it’s very hard and at the time (i was young) the overhead costs wouldn’t have worked for me. BUT I purchased a bunch of enamelware items from this brand because I love the look of it. Food looks great in it and you can bake in it. I still use the items all the time. It’s my go to 9 x 13 pan for making casseroles and baked pastas. They have held up incredibly well and then even wash up well with a scouring pad.