Smoked Salmon and a Summer Fig Salad

We had such an awesome weekend being back in San Diego after our trip to Europe. Although it was amazing to discover all the food in Paris, the many cities in Croatia, and London, it was so nice to be back in our own kitchen again, making the most of our local San Diego produce.

We’ve recently been doing some more experimenting with our Weber charcoal grill, and were really interested in trying to smoke salmon on it. We have been reading up on the best way to do it in our Meathead cookbook, and were excited to try it for the first time.

Something else we learned recently about purchasing fish is that you shouldn’t always be skeptical about farm raised. We had always read that wild caught salmon is better, but found that Whole Foods is actually a great source of eco-friendly farm raised fish that has high standards for the quality of their products. You can read more about their standards here.

So we ended up buying our fish from Whole Foods and making both a savory and sweet version on the grill. Here’s the process we followed:

Using this recipe as a guideline, we started by brining the 2lbs of salmon fillets for about 2 hours in a salt solution. Once brined, rinsed, and dried, we topped all the fillets with black pepper and garlic powder and added about a tablespoon of maple syrup to one fillet to make the sweet version.

We then set them all over indirect heat in the Weber kettle with the coals holding the grill temp to about 225 degrees (scientifically verified with digital thermometer gadgets). In this case, we used hickory wood chips in a foil packet as the source for the smoky flavor.

After about 30 minutes, we checked the internal temp of the fillets and rotated them to even things out. When the internal temps reached about 150 degrees after 45 minutes, the fish was ready. It is important here that you go based on the internal temperature to determine doneness – that’s the best way to know the fish is cooked perfectly and has reached a safe temperature.

We served the salmon with an awesome summer salad we created from the seasonal produce in our CSA box. (Sidenote, we subscribe to Farm Fresh to You and if you use the code JULI3729 you can get $15 off your first box!)

We have really been enjoying candystripe figs this summer and they look so pretty on this salad! The sweetness was also a perfect balance with the smoky salmon.

Summer Fig Salad Recipe:
Serves 4

• 3 cups romaine leaves, chopped
• 1-2 radishes, thinly sliced
• 2-3 figs, thinly sliced
• 1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cucumber, halved and sliced
• 1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 1/2 avocado, diced
• 2 tbsp toasted sunflower seeds
• Serve with Primal Kitchen’s Honey Mustard dressing or use the simple homemade Citrus Vinaigrette recipe from our post here

Assemble the salad by adding the romaine to a large salad bowl. Top with sliced radishes, figs, red onion, cucumber and feta cheese. Add the toasted sunflower seeds and top with the diced avocado. Toss with citrus or honey mustard vinaigrette and serve.

We love all the Primal Kitchen salad dressings because their ingredients are awesome. If you want to try out any of their products, you can use this code for 15% off your full order from their website: GROK15

The final product tasted AMAZING. We loved both the sweet and savory versions, and thought it was pretty incredible that we could achieve such an awesome smoked salmon with just a few simple steps and a basic charcoal grill (no fancy Green Egg required).

If you try out the recipe we would love to hear about it in the comments so drop us a line and let us know!

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