Gravlax is salmon cured with salt, sugar, and dill. It is a Scandinavian specialty. There are two good things about it: (1) It is delicious, and (2) It is easy to make.

Incidentally, the red color of salmon comes from the shrimp they eat. The wild Alaskan sockeye in the picture has about the deepest red I’ve ever seen. That’s a straight photo. That salmon must have eaten some really smokin’ shrimp.

The proportion of salt to sugar vary considerably among the recipes. I like a half cup of salt to one cup of brown sugar and a tablespoon of ground pepper. This will preserve about two one-pound salmon fillets. Make a sandwich of dill, salt mixture, and a quarter cup of brandy between the salmon fillets, with the skin side of the fillets out. Cover the outside with the rest of the salt mixture, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, put it in a plastic bag, and refrigerate for 48 hours.

A bunch of fresh dill is nice, but about a quarter cup of dried dill weed works adequately. Some leave out the dill entirely, but I wouldn’t take responsibility for that. Some recipes have twice as much salt as sugar. Most recipes call for putting weight on the stack. A cutting board with some cans on it works for the weight, and I do that without knowing for sure if it is really necessary.

I caution against leaving it to marinate much more than 48 hours. It gets saltier and stiffer the longer it marinates. There is the possibility of using less salt, which should allow for longer marination.

It is sliced thinly, like smoked salmon, and served on bread or in various other ways, as are suggested in the recipes. The Swedish tradition is to use mustard-dill sauce.

Here are dozens of gravlax recipes from our custom search engine.

Our recipe search engine uses Google to search about 280 recipe sites (as of this writing) that we have given it. If you would like to search for any recipe, it is always available in the right hand column on our home page .

Gravlax can be purchased over the web from igourmet, but it is much cheaper to make it.