Salmon with red miso

On the island of Hokkaido, in Japan, they make a simple and tasty salmon dish by flavoring it with miso paste and mirin and cooking it in foil with cabbage and onions. At least I knew a student from Hokkaido who prepared it that way, and it was delicious! My dish is nothing like the tasty original I had before but it does bring back my memories of that succulent fish.

I didn’t have any cabbage on hand but I did have plenty of onions. I sliced one up into good sized rings and layed it out on a sheet of heavy foil. I seasoned them with salt and pepper.

I took a whole salmon filet and marinated it with a mixture of red miso paste, mirin (a sweet Japanese cooking wine), a tiny bit of soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil. More onions were placed on top.

The salmon and onions were wrapped up tight in foil and cooked simply on a hot griddle. I cooked it from start to finish in about 20 minutes – until I saw steam coming out of the foil at a good rate and it felt hot all the way around.

Here’s what it looked like when I opened it up. I wish it had the same dark color that it had before I cooked it but it was tasty never the less.