These Indian-style salmon filets are marinated in a spice-infused yogurt sauce, then baked until perfectly crisp. Matt Chamberlain
Tender, versatile salmon is the centerpiece of traditional dishes all over the world. From Swedish cured salmon with a bright honey-mustard sauce to Japanese-style skewers, yogurt-marinated filets from India, and more, here are 15 of our favorite preparations from around the globe.
Classic cured salmon is served with a bright mustard-honey sauce in this recipe adapted from Jake Tilson’s In At The Deep End. Flavored with pepper, cloves, and dill, the fish requires at least 5 days to cure, so be sure to plan ahead. Use the best-quality salmon you can find.
Tandoori Salmon
These Indian-style salmon filets are marinated in a spice-infused yogurt sauce, then baked until perfectly crisp.
Poached Salmon with Saffron Sauce
NORWAY The rich flavor of Norwegian salmon is combined with a subtle sauce of saffron, butter, and fennel to create this elegant dish.
Miso-Marinated Salmon with Green Sauce
JAPAN For thousands of years, Japanese cooks have used the fermented soybean paste called miso to preserve fish. Now that modern refrigeration is available, they turn to miso not for its preservative qualities but for the sweet and salty flavor it lends.
FRANCE Elegant and surprisingly easy to prepare, the salmon in this dish is immersed in a buttery, wine- and mussel-infused broth. (Nage is the French word for swim.)
Exceptional Salmon
ENGLAND Easy and delicious, this quick-to-make recipe is typical of Nigella Lawson’s no-nonsense, breezy approach to food.
Smoked Salmon with Taro Chips
SOUTH PACIFIC This beautiful appetizer was created at the former Ritz-Carlton Mauna Lani in Hawaii, where it was inspired by a local island kitchen and dressed up to create a “Ritzy” version of lomi-lomi salmon for the hotel’s upscale clientele.
Tom’s Vladivostok Potato Salad
This potato salad—flavored with crabmeat, salmon caviar, and garlic-laced mayonnaise—was created by Tom Hudgins when he lived in the Russian city of Vladivostok.
Cedar-Smoked Salmon
UNITED STATES You don’t need a smoker to lend a slightly spicy, faintly sweetish hint of the outdoors to fresh salmon. On board a friend’s boat in Alaskan waters, we improvised this method with strips from cedar logs. Back home, we substituted shakes of untreated aromatic cedar (sold by the bundle at lumberyards and hardware stores).