Just a few ingredients elevate this simple oven baked salmon with roasted tomatoes to an elegant, yet easy, summer dinner. The sweet sauce with sherry vinegar and a touch of honey will blow your mind!
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This is the ultimate easy late summer dinner. There are hardly even any steps. Seriously.
Slice tomatoes in half. Whisk together some sauce over here and mix another quick sauce over there. Bake. Done. Eat.
It's that simple.
Once again, I have adapted two different recipes for a mash up. The roasted tomato half comes from a NYTCooking recipe by Lidey Hueck. When I first looked at the ingredients: tomatoes, sherry vinegar, honey, garlic, I thought "That sounds good."
When I tasted it I thought, "Oh WOW! This is REALLY good!" Vinegar + honey + tomatoes = amazing.
The oven baked salmon with basil yogurt sauce half of the mash up comes from an idea on Jamie Oliver's website.
I might not have really thought about putting salmon with tomatoes, but it works because we are not making a heavy sauce here.
The only thing you're doing to the tomatoes is cutting them in half before being roasted. They retain some of their integrity and give a pop of intense sweetness.
But it's the sherry vinegar in this recipe that really does it for me. This is a secret ingredient for salad dressings and sauces that you should be aware of! It has a roasty, nutty quality that adds a certain something... a "je ne sais quoi", if you will.
What's a good substitute for sherry vinegar?
I highly recommend you seek out some sherry vinegar to make the roasted tomato sauce. I can usually find it at Whole Foods, or look on Amazon or at Italian specialty grocers. But if you can't find it, try rice vinegar or white wine vinegar.
Oven Baked Salmon with Roasted Tomatoes and Basil Yogurt Sauce
Like I said, we only have to do a few things things, so let's get started.
Use a good chef's knife and cut the tomatoes in half.
Then put them in an even layer in a casserole dish. The one pictured here is by Juliska and it's their Berry & Thread pattern.
In a glass bowl, mix together the sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and honey. Using a Microplane grater, grate the garlic and add to the mixture in the bowl.
Whisk all the ingredients together. And you're not going to believe how good this tastes!
Then pour over the tomatoes in the casserole dish and bake for about 25 minutes.
The tomatoes should have released their juices and will start to look wrinkly.
While the tomatoes are roasting, make the basil yogurt sauce. Add the yogurt, chopped basil, lemon zest, lemon juice, and dijon mustard to a bowl.
Mix all of the ingredients together and season with salt if needed. (It might not need it if your mustard is on the salty side.)
Season the salmon filets with salt.
Flip them over and season the skin with salt and drizzle with olive oil.
Lay the salmon filets on top of the roasted tomatoes skin side up and bake for another 8-12 minutes, depending on how done you like your salmon. For me, 8 minutes was perfect and the salmon was cooked about medium.
What's the white stuff on salmon?
The "white stuff" that forms on salmon when you cook it is a protein called Albumin. It exists as a liquid in the fish filet when raw, but becomes solid when cooked. It is not harmful.
There's really no need to worry about this or to try to prevent it from forming. Either eat it or scrape it off, and get on with your life.
To serve, transfer each salmon filet to a plate - some of the tomatoes will have kind of baked into the filet when you turn them over–I love this. Scoop some more roasted tomatoes and the sweet sherry vinegar sauce onto each plate and top with the basil yogurt sauce.
What is the healthiest way to cook salmon?
Baking salmon, like we're doing in this recipe, is very healthy. I'm only adding a splash of olive oil to it. Poaching and steaming are also healthy ways to cook salmon.
Try another simple salmon recipe:
More fish recipes
Ingredients
Roasted Tomatoes and Salmon
- 24 oz salmon, skin-on (four 6 oz filets)
- 2 pints cherry tomatoes of any and all colors about 20 ounces
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp sherry vinegar
- 2 tsp honey
- 4 garlic cloves
- 2 tsp kosher salt
Basil Yogurt Sauce
- 1/2 cup full-fat plain Greek yogurt
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves (tightly packed)
- 2-3 tsp lemon juice
- zest of one lemon
- kosher salt to taste, if needed
Instructions
Roast the Tomatoes
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Slice all of the tomatoes in half and place them in a single layer in a casserole dish.
- Add the sherry vinegar, honey, olive oil, and salt to a bowl. Grate the garlic cloves into the bowl and whisk to combine.
- Pour the sauce over the tomatoes and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the tomatoes have released juices and start to look wrinkly.
Make the Basil Yogurt Sauce, Prep and Bake the Salmon
- Finely chop the basil and zest the lemon. Combine yogurt, basil, mustard, lemon juice (2 or 3 tsp, depending on how tart you want it), and lemon zest in a small bowl and set in the fridge until the salmon is done. Season with salt, if needed.
- Season the salmon filets with salt, then flip them over and season the skin with salt, then drizzle with olive oil.
- Place the salmon filets skin side up on top of the roasted tomatoes and bake for another 8-12 minutes, depending on how you like your salmon cooked.
- Place each filet on a plate with more tomatoes and their juices and top with basil yogurt sauce.
Notes
- I highly recommend you seek out some sherry vinegar to make the roasted tomato sauce. It has a very special roasty, nutty flavor. I can usually find it at Whole Foods, or look on Amazon or at Italian specialty grocers. But if you can't find it, try rice vinegar or white wine vinegar.
- Grating the garlic instead of chopping it does two things: it gives the sauce a better texture (no chunks) and the flavor is a little milder and distributed throughout the sauce. A Microplane grater is essential for this task. I use mine almost every day for one thing or another.
- I cooked this recipe in my Juliska Berry & Thread casserole dish.
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