Soy Honey Barbecued Salmon Fillets

[Greg Who Cooks]

Honey and soy sauce have seemed to me to be always just so right for each other, the sweetness of the honey perfectly setting off the smoky saltiness of soy sauce. What if you wedded garlic to that? This is my original recipe (as original as anything can be in cooking, subject to others inventing the same thing before or after you did). It is intended for cooking on a gas barbecue grill. It's important to get skin on fillets because the skins are part of the cooking method.

four 6-8 oz. salmon fillets, skin on
1 C. honey
1/4 C. soy sauce
8 cloves garlic, finely minced

Mix the marinade ingredients, then marinate the salmon flesh side down for 30-60 minutes. Or throw everything inside a plastic bag, remove all the air, leave it in the fridge for same time. You can poke it every now and then if you like.

Preheat your barbecue then cook the fillets skin side up until the bottom (flesh) surface begins to brown and the marinade is cooked on. (Barbecue top closed except while checking progress.) Flip over to skin side down and brush the top with the marinade, then discard your marinade.

(Or alternately you could bring any remaining marinade to a boil in a small sauce pan, adding perhaps rice wine if more liquid is necessary, to be served with or over the salmon. The sauce must achieve a boil at least for a short instant to kill any possible bacteria before it can be safe to serve.)

Continue cooking with grill top down until doneness is to your liking. The skins will be stuck to your grill when the fish is done. Use a spatula to separate the fillets from the skins and move the fillets to your serving plate. (Use whatever grill cleaning methods/tools you like and discard the skins.)

This is my favorite way to serve salmon.

 

[Paymaster]

Sound awesome!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Chef Munky]

Just grilled some Salmon this morning. Next time around your recipe is one to try. Thank you.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Thanks for the reply! I fist saw this topic pop up and thought "OMG somebody stole my recipe!!!" until I saw that I was the OP.

Remember to get skin-on fillets. The skin protects the fillets from burning when you're cooking the second side. You separate the fillets from the skins with a spatula when they're done. Any burning is done on the skin which is discarded. The skin keeps the fillet together until you scoop it off with a spatula.

I've been frustrated when I wanted this recipe for dinner and the market had only skinless fillets. It's almost as if they think nobody would want the skin on.

 

[Chef Munky]

It ain't been stolen yet... Gimme time.

Your right it is frustrating to find Salmon that still has the skin on it. IMHO if your going to grill it and want moist fillets it's a must have. Unless your into dry as chalk Salmon.

Every time I try to grill it flesh side up first, to get the marks,turn it over to skin side down to finish up, the meaty side always stuck to the grill. Drove me insane. Until I wised up.

Turned on one more burner kept it on low. Now I start them skin side up. Meaty side basted and moved over flipped to finish. Now they slide right off intact. Remove it when done. Let it rest and slide a butter knife under it. The skin slips right off.

 

[Merlot]

I'm going to have to try this, I can not cook salmon well unless you count salmon cakes!

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

It ain't been stolen yet... Gimme time.

Your right it is frustrating to find Salmon that still has the skin on it. IMHO if your going to grill it and want moist fillets it's a must have. Unless your into dry as chalk Salmon.

Every time I try to grill it flesh side up first, to get the marks,turn it over to skin side down to finish up, the meaty side always stuck to the grill. Drove me insane. Until I wised up.

Turned on one more burner kept it on low. Now I start them skin side up. Meaty side basted and moved over flipped to finish. Now they slide right off intact. Remove it when done. Let it rest and slide a butter knife under it. The skin slips right off.

Well of course I'm kidding. There are no original recipes, except in the minds of those who thought them up, doubtlessly original in their own minds but nobody ever knows if some predecessor thought the same thought previously. I came up with the recipe in the OP with my original idea but I'm sure others have conceived of the same or similar recipes many times in the past. But I like to think of it as my "original" idea.

Yes of course you've got the idea. Cook them on the flesh side while they're raw and cohesive and firm, then flip them over and cook them on the skin side when they're starting to get flaky and lose their cohesiveness. Then the part that sticks to the grill is the skin, the part you weren't going to eat anyway.

Again I noticed this myself but I'm sure countless fish grillers have made the same observation, probably for centuries or millennia, even before gas grills were invented.

Probably the original "fish on a stick" ensued when an enterprising fisherman non-sushi lover rammed a stick up the fish's anal opening and stuck it over a fire, and noticed the skin fell off but the fish still tasted good.

I'm going to have to try this, I can not cook salmon well unless you count salmon cakes!

This recipe is easy. Cook the first side until you notice caramelization of the sugar in the honey (it starts getting browned), then flip it over to skin side down. At this point you don't care if the bottom gets burned. You're going to throw it away anyway. Continue cooking until the fish starts becoming flaky--this is your sign that its done--and you can baste it during cooking flesh side up if you give your marinade a quick boil to sterilize it--and then the final step you use your spatula to scoop off the fish and leave the skins behind. (I clean my grill later and discard the skins.) If you boil your marinade you can use it as a sauce over or as a dipping sauce, but don't the use raw sauce you marinated your fish in, for food safety reasons.

This recipe is very simple and very easy to cook, and tastes far better than I would expect from the few ingredients. It goes well with steamed white rice--I prefer Thai jasmine rice--and also goes well with grilled vegetables of any sort, easy to cook while you're cooking your salmon.

 

[Savannahsmoker]

Thanks, will give this a shot on the next fish grill.

 

[Kylie1969]

Thank you for this wonderful recipe Greg

We have just started buying and cooking our own salmon and it is always great to find new and interesting ways to cook the salmon and to season and marinate it, great to experiment with flavours