Brown Sugar and Ginger Glazed Salmon

I posted a while back about Broiled Tilapia Parmesan, which turned out to be an amazingly delicious and quick meal. I hadn’t done much broiling since then, but thought it might be about time.

Prior to finally getting over my fear of broiling, I picked up a recipe card from the seafood counter at Safeway (our grocery store) for Brown Sugar and Ginger Glazed Salmon. It calls for broiling, which made me nervous. There is a similar recipe on allrecipes.com, which also called for broiling, but the reviewers had also laid out a method for baking the fish for 30 minutes at 375 degrees instead. I tried that several months ago and it was delicious, albeit without the crunchy glazed-sugar texture that was originally intended.

So I thought I’d try again with a fillet of salmon that I had frozen, but I forgot to thaw it in advance so I put it in a large zip-lock bag in a sink of cool water. I’ve read that you should never allow things to thaw at room temp because the bacteria will grow on the surface, and I was afraid to put it in the microwave (which technically has the same problem but I often do it anyway with meat) because I didn’t want the fish to cook.

Then I set about making my glaze, which calls for brown sugar, Dijon mustard, soy sauce, and ground ginger.

All stirred up, it looks like this – a crunchy, sticky mixture.

When the salmon’s thawed enough, season the plain side with salt and pepper.

Then place it on a greased rack (I just put tin foil over a baking sheet), skin side up.

Broil it for a few minutes, then turn it over and put the glaze on.

Broil it for a few more minutes, then cut into it and discover that the salmon is not nearly as thawed as you thought it was.

Curse yourself for not cutting the fillet into smaller pieces in the first place and for not thawing it fully, tell your husband that dinner is going to be a lot longer than you expected, and lower the oven temp so that you can bake it to get the center cooked.

Serve it with rice and steamed broccoli ages later, after hubby has already fallen asleep since it took so damn long. Ooops.

Already printed this recipe so it won’t go into my Tastebook. Comment if you want it, or else try the link above for a similar recipe (just cut down on the brown sugar and Dijon and add some soy sauce and ginger).

Happy eating!