The Best Way To Dress Salmon? Use A Sauce With Deeper Fish Flavor

One of the most consumed types of fish in America, salmon has a distinctly pink hue and ultra flakey, delicate texture with plenty of important nutrients. Salmon is also considered to have a pronounced fishiness that you might attempt to balance with acidity or spicy seasonings. While the odor has earned it a bad rap, salmon's fishy flavor is a prized and delicious characteristic that you can enhance with an even deeper fish flavor, which makes fish sauce the ultimate savory condiment to dress salmon.

A popular ingredient in Asian sauces and marinades, fish sauce is the liquid remnants made when fermenting fish in salt-brine. The fermented fish offers a concentration of the funky and oceanic notes that comprise the exalted umami taste. Plus, you get the saltiness from the brine to deepen the fish flavor even more. Comparable to Worcestershire sauce — another fermented fish sauce — fish sauce has also been used in creative ways to upgrade the savoriness of dishes like gazpacho, burgers, stews, and compound butter. Thus, it's the perfect secret weapon to add to a salmon marinade, saute sauce, or dressing. A few dashes of fish sauce offer a complexity that enhances and complements the fishy, savory profile of salmon.

Fish sauce is a flavoring agent that packs a powerful punch, so a little bit goes a long way. A few tablespoons is all it takes to infuse sauces, glazes, and dressings with that savory je ne se quois that'll upgrade your salmon recipe. We have 21 salmon recipes that you can improve with fish sauce; perhaps the easiest application is simply adding a tablespoon or two to this salmon burger recipe. A tiny bit of extra liquid will be easily absorbed by the ground salmon, seasonings, and bread crumbs.

A sweet honey or brown sugar marinade will offer the perfect flavor complement for savory, salty fish sauce to shine. You can swap soy sauce with fish sauce in the sweet and sour marinade for this recipe for honey lime salmon. It'd also be a great soy sauce substitute in this miso salmon recipe that blends miso with brown sugar, rice vinegar, and red pepper flakes for a sweet, savory, and spicy marinade.

Even if you're going to pan fry salmon in a skillet with olive oil, you can still incorporate fish sauce into a lemon butter sauce. The acidity will complement the fishiness of the salmon while the fish sauce will make it that much more savory. If you're new to fish sauce, the brand that we like most is the Vietnamese family-owned brand Red Boat, available on Amazon.