Not Pesto Or Marinara: Pair Salmon With This Italian Sauce For An Easy And Delicious Dinner

Many busy home cooks look forward to salmon night because it's as simple as it is predictable. The fatty fish is often the saving grace of an otherwise chaotic day, given that it can be perfectly executed on culinary autopilot. As one component of a three-part formula that makes dinner even easier by combining a protein with a carb and a vegetable, baked salmon is also a classic, all-time best. But it can still feel a bit monotonous if you don't tinker with its seasonings now and then — and Italian salsa verde is just the tasty, no-cook sauce to make your seafood a swimming success.

Italian salsa verde doesn't contain the typical tomatillos that star in what might be the more familiar Mexican version of the sauce. Rather, it's resolutely green with fresh leafy herbs, fragrant with garlic, and bright with briny acidity. If that doesn't sound too far off from pesto, know that Italian salsa verde doesn't include pine nuts or parm, nor is basil its standard star. But if the sauce's otherwise pretty adaptable parts all sound like elements you'd want to introduce to your baked salmon anyway, then you've got a good grasp on why it works so well with the versatile fish fillets. All you have to do is toss your Italian salsa verde together, add it to the cooked fish, and make sure to keep this delicious new zag in your salmon night rotation.

A dynamic Italian salsa verde can include a bunch of chopped parsley, a couple of tablespoons of capers, a few cloves of garlic, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, salt, and some anchovies, all pulverized together. But it can also include a hint of basil and a few shakes of red pepper flakes. You could also skip the sometimes divisive anchovies and add diced shallots instead. As long as you whip up something that's verdant, pungent, and saline, you're in the sauce — and salmon baking — business.

Once you've found an Italian salsa verde you're happy with, you can use it more as a condiment than you would when preparing pesto salmon, in which the fillets are baked under a blanket of the sauce. However, your actual fish preparation can remain largely the same. You'll pat the salmon dry, swipe with oil, and season with a little fresh black pepper and possibly even less salt, depending on how much of the salty stuff you added to your salsa verde. You can then bake the fillets skin-side down for about 20 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit before plating and topping them with a few robustly flavored spoonfuls of the sauce for a fresh reminder of how easy fish cookery can be.