What Is Salmon and How Can I Use It?

If salmon has turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use it with confidence and how to choose it, cook it, store it, what to substitute, and 181 recipes to try it in.

What is salmon?

Salmon is a pink-fleshed, oil-rich fish that takes a hard sear or a low oven equally well, which is why it shows up in more recipes here than any other fish.

Its fat is what makes it forgiving on flavor and unforgiving on timing. Cook it a few minutes too long and the same fat that kept it moist squeezes out as chalky white curd.

The color comes from a diet of krill and shrimp. Wild fish range from deep red sockeye to softer pink coho and king, while farmed Atlantic salmon is the mild, evenly fatty fillet most people buy week to week.

It is sold whole, as a side, as portioned fillets, or as steaks, fresh or frozen. Almost all of it eats best somewhere between just-cooked and barely translucent in the center.

Cooking Salmon

The single number worth remembering is doneness. Pull salmon at an internal 125°F (52°C) for a moist, just-set center; it climbs a few more degrees off the heat. Push past 140°F (60°C) and the flesh turns dry and the white albumin weeps out along the surface.

High heat builds flavor. A hot pan or a 425°F (220°C) oven gives you browning and a crust, the approach behind a Mustard-Crusted Salmon or a sheet-pan Baked Salmon with Dill.

Low and slow goes the other way. Poaching in barely-trembling liquid keeps a Cold Glazed Salmon silky and even-colored, with no browning at all. Both are right; they just aim at different textures.

What Goes With It, and the Skin

Salmon's richness wants something sharp against it. Lemon, dill, capers, mustard, soy, ginger, and a dry white all cut the fat and keep a fillet from feeling heavy.

The skin is worth keeping on. It shields the flesh from direct heat and holds a delicate fillet together as it cooks.

For crisp skin, start it skin-side down in a hot, dry pan and leave it alone until it releases on its own, which turns it into the best bite on the plate.

The most common mistake is moving the fish too early. A fillet sticks until the crust forms, then lets go cleanly. If it tears when you lift it, it simply is not ready yet, so give it another minute.

Substitutes

For a similar rich, oily fillet, ocean trout is the closest swap and cooks nearly identically. Arctic char is a touch leaner but takes the same treatments and the same doneness.

For a meatier, firmer fish, tuna or swordfish steaks stand in well on the grill, though both prefer to stay rarer in the center than salmon does. Mackerel matches the oiliness but brings a much stronger flavor.

If you only need flaked cooked fish for cakes or chowder, canned salmon works straight from the tin.

Wild Versus Farmed, and Storage

Wild salmon (sockeye, coho, king, pink) is firmer and leaner, with deeper color and flavor that varies by species and season.

Farmed Atlantic is fattier and milder, consistent year-round, which is why it forgives a heavier hand in the pan. Neither is simply better. Wild rewards careful cooking; farmed is the dependable weeknight choice.

Buy fillets that look moist and translucent, not dull or gapping into visible flakes, and that smell clean and briny rather than sour. Press gently: the flesh should spring back.

Keep fresh salmon in the coldest part of the fridge and cook it within one to two days. To hold it longer, freeze it; sealed well it keeps several months, though the texture softens slightly on thawing. Thaw in the fridge overnight, never on the counter.

Cooked salmon keeps three to four days refrigerated, and the leftovers are better flaked cold into a salad than reheated, which only pushes it further past done.

Types of salmon

Specific kinds of salmon and the recipes that use them.

Salmon fillets

A salmon fillet is the boneless side of the fish cut lengthwise off the backbone. It is the form most weeknight salmon cooking starts from.

For the fish itself, its color and doneness and the wild-versus-farmed split, see salmon. This page is about handling the cut: finding pin bones, portioning evenly, and crisping the skin.

Fillets come skin-on or skinless, as a whole side or in portioned pieces. The thickness changes across one fillet, the head end thick and the tail end thin, which is the detail that decides how it cooks.

Canned salmon

Canned salmon is salmon that has been cooked and sealed in the can, soft enough to mash and ready to use straight from the pantry. It is the cheaper, more rugged cousin of fresh salmon, and the backbone of old-school comfort food like salmon loaf and salmon patties.

Two kinds fill the shelves. Pink salmon is the pale, mild, inexpensive standard. Red (sockeye) salmon is deeper in color and richer in taste, and it costs more, so people save it for dishes where the salmon flavor leads.

Salmon steaks

Salmon steaks are bone-in cross-section cuts, sliced straight through the body of the fish so each one carries a piece of the backbone and ribs with the meat wrapped around it. You can spot one by its rough horseshoe shape, open at the belly end.

That bone is the difference between a steak and a fillet. A fillet is boneless meat lifted off one side of the fish.

A steak holds its shape on the grill and bastes the meat from the bone as it cooks, which is why some cooks swear by it for the barbecue.

Smoked salmon

Smoked salmon is salmon that has been cured in salt and then smoked, which preserves it and gives it that silky, savory character. It comes ready to eat, no cooking needed, which is the first thing to know about working with it.

There are two main styles, and they are not interchangeable. Cold-smoked salmon, the kind sold as lox or Nova, is smoked at low temperature, so it stays raw in texture: soft and glossy and thin enough to slice into sheets.

Hot-smoked salmon is cooked by the smoke, so it is firm and opaque and breaks into flakes like a baked fillet.