This recipe is featured in our guide for hosting A Wild Alaskan Winter Celebration. To download the full guide with festive menus for every sized gathering this season, enter your email above!
Our recipe for citrusy sockeye salmon is a sheet pan meal that pairs up the savory, robust taste of sockeye with the complex, roasted flavors of bitter and sweet cool-weather crops. It’s a healthy weeknight meal that is ridiculously easy to prep and requires less than 30 minutes of cook time.
Sockeye salmon is roasted alongside halved lemons, which become mellow (and so juicy!) as they cook so that they’re citrusy without being sour. The lemons become the perfect complement to bitter radicchio and sweet roasted shallots and scallions, all of which caramelize beautifully in a hot oven.
Before you cook the salmon for this recipe, we suggest brining it in a simple saltwater solution (1 tablespoon of salt per 1 cup of water). Use as much water as you need to fully submerge the fillets. The benefit of this optional but easy step is a juicier portion of salmon. Brined salmon also looks nicer on the plate, since brining helps to prevent albumin (a harmless white protein) from forming on the surface of the salmon. This step can be done while your veggies are getting a head start in the oven so that you're not adding to the total prep time for this meal.
If you haven't defrosted your fillets of sockeye yet, hop over to our How to Thaw blog post for a step-by-step guide on how to defrost seafood the right way.