Bake Salmon With A Drizzle Of This Condiment For A Sweet And Spicy Upgrade

Unadorned, salmon has a mild flavor, buttery texture, and a silken quality from its natural fat. Its gentle tasting notes, versus something more assertive, such as mackerel, make salmon an ideally blank canvas for so many potential ingredient whims. Salmon benefits from a bit of pesto, for example, some seafood-enhancing mustard and panko, and tons of other quick-but-impressive preparations. However, a drizzle of hot honey is the brilliant sweet-spicy punch you may not have known your salmon needed.

Hot honey does double duty with little more than the squeeze of a bottle. If you happen to make your own hot honey, you can even increase the fire depending on what, or how many, peppers you choose to infuse. You're also bound to find a hot honey you like amid our ranking of the best store-bought hot honey brands. With that sweet, sticky heat at your disposal, you can introduce it to salmon night as casually or elaborately as you like.

It's fairly unlikely you're aiming to create candied salmon, so less hot honey is more in this case. Its heat and sweet are balanced to begin with, but a little lemon juice keeps those elements in ideal harmony. About a 2:1 ratio of hot honey to lemon juice achieves both the restraint and the equilibrium you need thanks to the fruit's acidic liquid. Something like 4 tablespoons of hot honey whisked together with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice should be plenty for two fillets. Good old salt and pepper are still compulsory for their classical flavor-enhancing properties.

The easiest way to make hot honey salmon is in the oven, which doesn't require any flipping. That keeps the honey from sticking or burning in the pan, which it likely would with stovetop jostling. Pat your salmon dry to prevent steaming while you preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. You can brush the hot honey mix on last, pop the fish in the oven, and begin checking for doneness after about 12 minutes. It should be moist and flaky once it reaches 125 degrees Fahrenheit on a meat thermometer, with a little spicy sweetness that tastes like way more work than it was.