I made this salmon recipe particularly with White Wine Poached Salmon & Saffron Rice in mind. I hesitate to call poaching salmon and making the rice a separate part of this recipe. After all, I made them at the same time and haven't eaten either the salmon or the rice without one another! When things are so intertwined, it can be difficult to separate the two. And I almost didn't make them distinct recipes because of this!
But, then I realized that, when I run out of saffron, I'm still going to want to poach salmon again! And, when I go to do that, I'm not going to want to have to sift through all of my how to make rice tutorial when I do.
I'd actually never poached fish before endeavoring in this recipe. I found a lot of recipes that called for using vegetable stock or chicken broth. This seemed kind of odd to me. After all, salmon has kind of a delicate flavor and already is quite an oily fish. Other recipes tended to add fish sauce, which confounds me to no end! Part of the reason that salmon is so popular is because it's less of a fishy fish. And why, oh why, would you want to make fish taste like chicken??
So, needless to say, after looking at a couple of recipes, I decided not to actually follow any of them! I really just combined Mediterranean-inspired ingredients with copious amounts of white wine and simmered until tender.
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What to Make w/ Wine Poached Salmon
There are plenty of things in the realm of wine poached salmon to explore. It's a fun dish to make and experiment with.
Poaching salmon isn't nearly as difficult as I thought that it was going to be! I've been endeavoring lately to just go for it. If there's something that I want to try my hand at? I'm just jumping in and going for it! And it's making for some absolutely delectable meals. This tomato and white wine poached salmon recipe combines the robustness of dry white wine with tomatoes, garlic, lemon, and kalamata olives.
Remove salmon from the refrigerator and let reach room temperature.
Meanwhile, add tomatoes, carrot, garlic, salt, and pepper to a food processor. Purée until smooth. This should take about 30-60 seconds.I'm using a fairly powerful food processor and didn't need to chop anything but the carrots up. If yours is less powerful, you may want to cut the tomatoes in half or quarter.
Add tomato purée, wine, lemon slices, kalamata olives, and saffron to a large pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.
As the sauce is coming to a simmer, cut the salmon fillet into 4 equal-sized pieces.My salmon fillet was about a pound, but this isn't an exact measurement here. You can easily make this recipe with more or less salmon. Just adjust the amount of wine, salt, and pepper accordingly. For one piece or a eight pieces, the rest of the ingredients are fine. You will have more sauce than you need, so upping the tomatoes isn't necessary unless you use significantly increase the amount of salmon. It's more about just having enough sauce to cover the fish!
Once the sauce is at a simmer, add salmon to the pot. Make sure that it's fully covered. If the salmon is peaking through the sauce, add more wine until it's at least covered by 1/4 inch.The amount of wine needed will differ depending on the size/amount of fish and depth of the pot. A wider pot will need more wine to cover based on how its distributed than a narrower one. This is fine! Just add or subtract wine accordingly. The ratio will still work out.
Simmer covered for 10-15 minutes, or until the salmon is cooked throughout.I usually cook salmon based on color. However, when poached the color isn't as clear an indicator! Salmon should flake with a fork when it's done and will have a lighter hue as it changes from translucent red to an opaque pink with white veins of fat seeping through. However, when poached in wine and tomatoes, it's less clear based on the color that the salmon is done! You're likely going to want to cut into it to see if it flakes, whether the inside is cooked, and/or reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit.
Remove salmon from the pot and let rest at room temperature for 10 minutes.
Once the salmon was cooked, I also simmered down the sauce for another 10 minutes just to cook out more of the wine and reduce it further.This is optional, but feel free to further simmer down if you want! I didn't want quite that much extra sauce and cooking it down will also cook out more of the alcohol, if you want a less boozy consistency.
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