Parmesan-Crusted Salmon

This is a simple, quick dish that I just kind of made one day and it turned out really well. I like to have it by itself for lunch, but I'm sure someone smarter than myself can come up with other things to make a meal out of it.

Step 1: Ingrediants

First thing to do is to thaw out your salmon if it's frozen. The best way I know to do this is to stick the fish in a bag and place that in a bowl of lukewarm water. If you're using an entire fillet you might have to use your sink.

Next get your ingredients together. All you need is:

dill weed
garlic power
lemon juice
parsely
black pepercorns (ground) -black pepper will work
kosher salt - regular salt will work
parmesan cheese


you'll also need a baking sheet and foil to cover it with.

Step 2: Prep and Cooking

This is something I just happened to make with what was available at the time so there aren't really any measurements, just look at the photos to get an idea of how much of each ingrediant you will need. The peice of salmon I used was quite small so you'll probablly need to scale everything up to fit your needs, again just look at the photos to get an idea of how much each ingrediant covers my peice of salmon (if you need to know it was aprox. 4oz.)

Cover the baking sheet with foil, then place the salmon in the center.
Pour enough lemon juice to completely cover the salmon.
Then sprinkle on the dill weed.
Generously apply some parsely, I used flakes but fresh would be better.
Add a little garlic powder, I used a little less than 1/2 teaspoon.
Ground black peppercorns add a lot to the flavor, but just using balck pepper can work too. You only need a pinch, grab some between your index finger and thumb and sprinkle it over the fish.
Kosher salt is another "gormet" ingrediant, it adds something extra to the flavor but you could get away just using regular salt. Apply in the same manner as the pepper, perhaps using even a little less.
Finally cover the entire salmon with parmesan cheese. I used the finely grated stuff that comes in a can, but grating your own from a block would not go amiss.

Turn you oven to broil. I know some ovens have a special bottom section just for broiling, but mine is in the oven itself, regardless set your oven rack as close as you can to the broiler. there should be cooking instructions that came with your peice of fish, mine suggested 5 minutes. For fish more than an inch thick a few additional minutes may be needed. The rule of thumb for cooking fish is to stop when you can easily flake it with a fork.
That's it, enjoy your fish.

a note about store-bought salmon:
Wild salmon turns a nice full pink color and the fatty parts a dark grey. Farm raised salmon does not, and if you can't get wild salmon look for a brand that had the good sense not to artifically color their fish. But if your salmon is artifically colored it probablly won't hurt anything, so use whatever you can get.