The Worst Salmon I've Ever Made

Neil had his wisdom teeth out on Tuesday and has thus been on a soft food diet, which is getting kind of old for both of us. He's had his fill of pudding and mashed potatoes. So last night I decided to cook something soft but relatively normal. A quick check of the kitchen revealed that we had salmon and sweet potatoes. Sounds like dinner to me!

This recipe for Asian salmon is my go-to salmon recipe. It's easy, it's quick, we usually have the ingredients on hand, and it's really good. Last night, however, we were out of onion. I contemplated just leaving it out, but then decided to look around see if I could find a recipe that contained only things I already had in the house. I settled on this recipe for maple salmon.

I got the fish out of the freezer - Kroger brand wild-caught Alaskan sockeye - and put it in a bowl of water to thaw. I immediately noticed that it smelled super fishy. I know that fishy smell = unfreshness, but I'm also not sure how a salmon fillet that's been frozen all its life can be unfresh. Was it unfresh when it was frozen? Was it allowed to thaw at some point and was then refrozen? Who can say? But I was hungry and didn't feel like going to the store and it didn't smell that bad, so I forged ahead.

A couple of the comments on the recipe mentioned wrapping the salmon in foil with the marinade, which sounded like a good idea. I prepared the marinade (which smelled and tasted wonderful), spooned it over the fish, wrapped it all up, and popped it in the fridge for half an hour. What the comments didn't mention, however, was whether or not I should bake the salmon in the foil. I know that's a pretty common baking method, but I've never actually done anything that way. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though. Having the salmon all wrapped up would keep it moist and tender, right? Into the oven went the foil-wrapped salmon.

20 minutes later I retrieved the salmon packet, opened it, and found... fish. It looked like baked salmon. It smelled like delicious marinade, but underneath all the maple-soy yumminess, there was still a strong fishy odor. I was beginning to have my doubts. But I plated it and the sweet potatoes and we dug in.

Ew.

It tasted, as you would expect, fishy. But the texture was at least as bad as the taste. I never knew that salmon could be tough! I took two bites and declared that I didn't want it. But there wasn't really anything else in the house to eat, so I tried some more. It was edible, but barely. I ate most of it and gave the rest to Franklin and Otis. (They tell me it was the best dinner they've ever had.)

Where did I go wrong? Clearly the flavor came from the fish, but how did it get so tough? Was it the funky fish or the foil wrap? It's times like these that I wish I knew what the hell I was doing in the kitchen.