Sustainably-sourced, packed with clean protein, and versatile, wild salmon is a meal prep superstar. Salmon meal prep helps fish lovers stay organized, get creative in the kitchen, limiting prep time and the cleanup it takes to make healthy weeknight meals.
Meal Prepping Your Salmon Saves Time & Promotes Health
Meal prepping allows you to make several days’ worth of food in one single kitchen session, cutting down the total time it takes to make a series of healthy breakfasts, lunches and dinners. You essentially only need to chop once, cook once, and clean up once in order to prepare several days’ worth of meals that will sustain you through the week.
Meal prepping doesn’t just save you time in the kitchen. Grocery store trips will be more efficient, as you’ll know exactly what to put in your cart to build out your meal plan. An added benefit of this is that you have the opportunity to cut down on food waste, since you’ll be shopping for and using up fresh produce more deliberately.
When you meal prep, you might end up eating healthier, too. Stocking your fridge with home cooked, ready-to-eat meals means that you’ve got plenty of great options when you’re feeling noshy or full-on hungry, even if you’re short on time. In other words, you won’t ever need to sacrifice healthy, balanced eating for convenience.
Plus, meal prepping gives you ample opportunity to build in nutrient-rich ingredients: lean protein, whole grains, fresh vegetables, legumes. Many members of Wild Alaskan Company enjoy meal prepping with wild-caught salmon, since the perfectly portioned packages of nutrient-dense coho and sockeye salmon are practically tailormade for healthy meal prep.
How to Do Meal Prep for Salmon
Can you meal prep salmon, even though fish tends to be more perishable than other proteins? Absolutely. In fact, meal prepping is a great way for you to cook with fresh-frozen, high-quality salmon, as you can plan to use up your salmon fillets as soon as they’ve been defrosted, rather than holding them for an extra day or two in the refrigerator because you didn’t get around to cooking that day.
If you’re using cold or hot smoked salmon, you’ll have even more flexibility when meal prepping, as these protein options have a longer shelf life.
How Much Salmon Should You Prep?
The night before you’re planning on having a meal prep sesh in the kitchen, remember to transfer any frozen salmon portions to the refrigerator so that they’ll be thoroughly defrosted by the time you’re ready to get to work. If using frozen fillets, plan on thawing out up to four days’ worth of salmon; you generally want to enjoy food, especially fish, within four days of cooking for the best flavor and texture, so avoid prepping more than you can eat in that period of time. If using cold or hot smoked salmon, you can stretch this meal prep plan out to a week, depending on what you’re pairing with the fish.
Best Cooking Methods for Salmon Meal Prep
Any cooking method can be used when meal prepping with salmon, but gentle methods like low-temperature baking, poaching, and steaming are ideal as they keep salmon fillets moist and tender, even when reheated. When deciding which cooking method to use, you may want to consider how refrigeration is going to affect the texture of the fish. For instance, crispy-seared salmon is only ever crispy when enjoyed immediately, so keep qualities like that in mind and find other ways to build texture into your meals.
Cook Time for Meal Prepping with Salmon
Pay extra attention to cook time. If you’re planning on reheating any of the prepped meals, cook the salmon until it’s a little underdone. As it reheats, it’ll end up cooking through a bit more. If you’re planning to consume the fish without reheating it — maybe you’ve meal prepped some salad bowls or summer rolls with salmon tucked into them — cook the fillets to your desired doneness.
Best Way to Store Meal Prepped Salmon
When packing up your meals, you can store them in meal prep containers of your choice, as long as they have a tight-fitting lid. If you’re steaming salmon in aluminum foil or parchment paper packets, these cooked meals can be left in their packets for super convenient storage and cleanup; just make sure to allow steam to escape and the meal to thoroughly cool before resealing the packets as best as you can. When you’re ready to reheat them, pop those packets directly onto a tray and into an oven (or toaster oven) until they steam up again.
Healthy and Easy Salmon Meal Prep Recipes
A solid meal prep plan features easily reheatable meals that balance flavor, texture, and nutrition to get you through the week. Here are a few salmon meal prep recipes to get your creative culinary juices flowing:
Smoked Salmon and Lentils
Meet your new favorite meal-prepped lunch: A protein-rich bowl of lentils flecked with fresh herbs, creamy goat cheese, nuts, and flavor-forward bits of hot smoked salmon. Enjoy it cold or at room temperature. One of the best parts about our recipe for smoked salmon and lentils is that there's no cooking required.
Baked Salmon and Veggies
Our recipe for baked salmon with a creamy dill horseradish sauce is a great one to adapt for meal prepping, since the sauce keeps well for a few days, and you’ll basically want to dip every vegetable in it until it’s gone. Customize it with veggies of your choice — maybe two or three different types to serve alongside the salmon — so that you can load up on veg without getting bored throughout the week. Zucchini, red onions, corn on the cob, roasted sweet potatoes… pick your faves that are in season for the most flavorful combos.
Sheet Pan Salmon with Asparagus and Lentils
Sheet pan salmon recipes are the holy grail for meal prep masters, and choosing a quick-cooking vegetable like asparagus allows you to put both the fish and veg in the oven at around the same time. Our recipe for easy sheet pan salmon uses a brush of honey mustard to give the fillets an intense burst of flavor, then coats them in crispy panko breadcrumbs. An optional dusting of parmesan adds a nutty umami to the roasted asparagus spears.
Lemon Garlic Salmon
The classic combo of lemon juice and garlic in our recipe for lemon garlic salmon is all you really need when cooking with full-flavored fillets of wild-caught fish. The addition of butter balances these flavors with a bit of richness, and also keeps the salmon fillets from drying out as they bake. If you prefer to make this recipe dairy-free, substitute olive oil. Meal prep it by making a big batch of dark leafy greens and hearty cooked grains, or pair it with a fresh veg salad to complement the butteriness of the salmon.
Honey Sriracha Salmon
This recipe for honey sriracha salmon from our friends at Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association is a little taste of everything: a little sweet, a little savory, and just the right amount of spice. Serve it up with noodles, in a wrap, or with a slew of veggie sides.
Moroccan Spiced Salmon with Green Beans
Kai Raymond’s zesty recipe for Moroccan grilled salmon is full of warm, North-African-inspired flavors — smoked paprika, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cloves, garlic, ground ginger, and black pepper. A brief marinade in these spices really turns up the dial on flavor and helps to keep the salmon moist upon reheating. To adapt this recipe for meal prep, simply roast green beans and the marinated salmon on a rimmed baking sheet at 425F; just make sure to give the green beans a 10 minute head start in the oven, then add the salmon the baking sheet to cook through for another 6 to 8 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets, adding an additional couple of minutes as needed to cook salmon to that perfect medium-rare doneness.
Wild Salmon Fried Rice with Garlicky Cucumbers
Our salmon fried rice recipe repurposes leftovers of both salmon and rice to create a comforting meal. The addition of garlicky cucumbers, first salted to enhance their snappy texture, gives the fried rice a freshness.
Low Carb Salmon with Miso Butter and Cauliflower Rice
Wild salmon is the ideal protein to use in low-carb, keto-friendly recipes. It’s low in saturated fats, rich in anti-inflammatory omega-3s, and tastes really, really good with a nice pad of grass-fed butter. Adding some miso to that butter brings the umami level up to 11: Try this combo out with our quick and easy recipe for keto salmon with broccoli, served over a heaping bowl of cauliflower rice.
Korean-Style Salmon and Scallion Pancakes
For a great grab-and-go meal prep option, try making a batch of crispy, Korean-style salmon and scallion pancakes to enjoy throughout the week with a side of soy sauce as a meal or hearty snack. They are easy to reheat on the stovetop, in a toaster oven, directly in a toaster. The batter for these pancakes can be made with regular flour, wheat flour, or even with a gluten-free flour bread to suit your needs.
Sweet and Spicy Wild Salmon Cakes
Salmon cakes can be reheated for an anytime meal: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and anything in between. They also can be served any which way, on their own, as a sandwich, on salad greens, on a rice bowl… you get the drift. Try out our recipe for sweet and spicy salmon cakes, made with ground sockeye; if you don’t have ground sockeye, you can substitute leftover salmon fillets or even a white variety of fish.
Where to Get the Best Salmon for Meal Prepping
By becoming a member of Wild Alaskan Company, you’ll get access to the best high-quality wild-caught salmon, delivered straight to your doorstep each month so that you can rock out your salmon meal prep plans for healthy, easily accessible eating every week. Learn more about how a Wild Alaskan Company membership works by visiting our homepage.
