Home-Cured Salmon

4 days is a long time to trust a process you cannot check on. You press salt and sugar onto raw fish, weight it down in the fridge, then wait, draining and flipping once a day while nothing visibly changes until, on day 4, it does. That kind of patience is the same patience the elimination phase has already been asking of you.

Curing the salmon cold instead of cooking it does more than change the texture. It keeps the selenium intact, the trace mineral your body uses in small amounts to manage the oxidative load that comes with an immune system working overtime, so day 4 hands you both the texture you paid deli prices for and the nourishment underneath it.

A fish gave its life for that pound of fillet, plainly, without needing softening. When you finally slice it thin, arrange it with some care, the way you would if a guest were coming, and let the first bite be unhurried.

Ingredients

• 1 pound boneless salmon
• 1/4 cup sea salt
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon dried dill
• 1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke

Brown sugar is a gray-area ingredient for strict elimination-phase AIP, and here it works almost entirely as a curing agent rather than a sweetener, because the rub is rinsed off after the cure and very little stays with the fish. If you would rather leave it out, you can cure with salt alone; the texture will be a touch firmer and the flavor more savory. For a variation, swap the dill for lemon or lime zest, or leave the herb out to let the liquid smoke come forward.

Method

• Rinse the salmon and pat it dry. Cut it crosswise into two equal halves.
• Stir together the salt, brown sugar, dill, and liquid smoke. Press the mixture firmly onto the flesh sides of both halves.
• Sandwich the two halves together skin-side out, wrap tightly in plastic, set in a dish, and weight it down with a second dish on top. Refrigerate.
• Once a day, drain off the liquid that collects and flip the package. Continue for 4 days.
• Unwrap, rinse off all the cure, and pat dry. Slice thin to serve, and eat within 3 days.

*Adapted from acleanplate.com*