Before refrigerators were a thing, people improvised delicious ways to keep their food fresh, like making sausages, curing bacon and fish, and fermenting vegetables (and sometimes meat!). Now humans are coddled by technology, and there's little need for preserving food the ways that we used to. Our refrigerators and smart phones have made us complacent eaters (I'm writing this on my iPhone) and as a result, we have settled for frost-bitten frozen pizzas and a boob tube sesh after a hard day at work.
A few years ago, I started curing salmon in the fridge with the easy method listed below. Although I'd like to find an alternative for plastic wrap (to avoid the xenoestrogens in plastic), I'm just mentally too lazy to find a better method. See what being pampered by technology does?
According to my research on Wikipedia, a dry cure without sugar is called a London cure. This is the kind I prefer, because sugar seems to be in just about everything else. Follow the steps below for tasty, dry-cured fish that keeps for a few weeks in your refrigerator.
You will need:
- 1 side of salmon or lake trout
- 1-2 T grated lemon
- 1/8 cup sea salt
- 1 T fennel or black pepper to taste
- Pliers
- Plastic wrap
- A pan to catch the water that is pulled out of the fish during curing
Rinse and pat the fish dry
De-bone fish with pliers.
Rub the mixture onto both sides, but especially the side without skin.
Wrap it in cling wrap and lay the fish in a pan.
Put it refrigerator, flipping once a day for 5 days.
Unrwap, rinse off mixture, pat dry with a towel, then slice on the diagonal.
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