Smoky Asian Salmon and Marsha's Asian Asparagus

5-4-2011  2 Salmon Fillets, about one lb Asparagus


Grilled on: Weber Silver One Touch
Charcoal: Kingsford original approx 30 briquettes
Wood: Hickory
Dry rub: none
Sauces: Allegro teriyaki Marinade, Mizkan Ginger Flavored Dressing, Soy Sauce
Times: minimum 1 hr for marinade, 20 min prep, 20 min grilling

First off, I don't normally eat Salmon. I think it's kinda gross. I like my fish white, battered and deep fried. Then served with a delicious mayonnaisy concoction called tartar sauce.  Oh the Captain is calling my name.  On the other hand I love rare fish too. Only once in my life I've been lucky enough to catch a Yellow Fin Tuna. Within an hour of the fish being cleaned, I barely seared the outside, sliced it up rare, and served it with homemead ponzu sauce.  Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, it was like butter in my mouth.

But now back to the fish at hand.  I love my wife and she loves Salmon, so that means that now I eat Salmon.  Also it's a lot healthier to eat grilled Salmon fillets than eating Fish n Chips or ribs.  Salmon contains Omega 3 fatty acids and The American Heart Association recommends that people eat fish containing these acids twice per week. So lets all raise our forks...oh wait a minute the FDA recommends that we shouldn't eat Salmon more than once per month because of carcinogens.

So here is the deal. Try to find wild Alaskan salmon and if you can't find that you can eat Canadian farm raised salmon, but I wouldn't recommend anything else. The Alaskan and Canadian salmon have lower carcinogens.  Also try to keep Salmon consumption down to once or twice per month.  

Method: Salmon
I picked up 2 Canadian farm raised fillets of salmon from the Western in Mountain Brook.  I rinsed them off, then dried them with a paper towel.  I then rubbed my hand on the meaty side of the fish not the skin side, looking for any bones. If the bones are there they will be easy to feel, if you do find any bones just pull them out. I placed the two fillets in a zip lock bag and added 2 tablespoons of teriyaki marinade, 2 tablespoons ginger dressing, and black pepper to taste.  Any teriyaki sauce will work.  Any ginger dressing will do that is not creamy.  This also applies to Italian and Greek dressings,  if you are going to be marinading or basting use non creamy.  The oil in non creamy is usually olive oil or vegetable oil, where the creamy dressings have dairy based oils and dairy burns at lower temperatures.

Let the salmon fillets marinate for 1-4 hours in the fridge, if you let the fish marinate for longer than 4 hours the meat may turn to mush.  Flip the zip lock bag over about every 30 min to evenly distribute the marinade.  20 minutes before I was ready to start cooking I lit my charcoal.  I used a 2 stage fire. I will later write an entire guide to starting and building grilling fires.  Basically a two stage fire has hot briquettes on one side of the grill and no briquettes on the other side of the grill.  After lighting my charcoal I pulled my fish out of the fridge and let it warm up to close to room temperature, this helps with even cooking.  When my fire was up to temperature I cleaned and oiled my grill grates.  Next I placed the the salmon fillets skin side down on the hot side of the grill and seared the skin.  It took about 4 minutes for the skin to get crispy.  I then put the salmon skin side down on the side of the grill without any charcoal.  Next I added 2 handfuls of hickory chips to the hot side of the grill and put the lid on the grill.  After 5 minutes I removed the lid from the grill and then placed the salmon fillets skin side up on the hot side of the grill.  I kept a close eye on the fillets to make sure they didn't burn but had a nice char on them.  Once they got that char I took them off the grill and let them rest at room temperature for 5 minutes. While the fish was resting I grilled the asparagus.

Marsha's Asparagus:
Marsha makes this asparagus all the time.  The nuttiness of the sesame oil and sesame seeds really plays off the flavor of the asparagus. 

First Marsha washed and removed the woody side of the asparagus. She then marinated it in a glass container with 3 tbsps of ginger dressing, 1 tbsp of freshly grated ginger, 1 tsp of teriyaki sauce, and one tbsp of soy sauce.  She let the asparagus marinate for about about 30 minutes.  After the salmon was removed from the grill, I placed the asparagus on the hot side of the grill.  This asparagus was really thick and took about 5 minutes to grill.  The last minute it was on the grill I sprinkled it with sesame seeds.  When I grill asparagus I want it to have a little char on the outside but not be over cooked. If its over cooked it gets limp and mushy like a canned green bean. 

Result: 
The asparagus tasted a little better this time. Not sure why.  May have been because I usually only buy the really thin asparagus and this stuff was like really thick. Maybe the thicker asparagus can take more heat and adding a little more char will add more flavor.  I will have to experiment with this.  

The salmon tasted great and was very moist.  I could not taste the marinade at all, but the fish had a really smoky flavor that was delicious. The smoke eliminated all fishy flavor.  Next time I will try a different marinade or let it marinate twice as long, I'll have to ask Marsha what she thinks.  I over cooked the skin, I just needed to keep a closer eye on what I was doing.  The smoke made the fish really dark, so appearance wasn't the best.  I think maybe I've finally figured out the best way to grill salmon though.  It's direct grilling, indirect smoking, and back to direct grilling.

Sides: Asian slaw.