Horseradish Honey Mustard Pecan Encrusted Salmon

Wild salmon.  One of my favorite foods.  Fresh buttery raw salmon sashimi is one of the few foods that I can place above others.

If most foods are up here, then good salmon sashimi is up here:

I’m so glad that wild salmon is available right now.  I try to avoid purchasing farmed stuff for the most part.  I don’t know about the details in the States, but I can only assume that they are just as bad if not worse than the salmon farming practices in Canada and Europe.  Here’s the situation: wild salmon have a life cycle that begins in freshwater streams, then they swim downstream to the ocean where most of their lives are spent until it’s time for them to reproduce at which point they make the most amazing and long voyage upstream to lay their eggs in freshwater streams (if they survive the trip) and then most types of salmon will die at this point (few species will actually do multiple spawning runs in their lifetime – thank you Wikipedia).

On the West Coast, salmon farms are essentially netted areas in the ocean that the fish live in.  The farms are often located along water routes that the wild salmon use during spawning.  In some of the more narrow passages these farms are densely positioned.  The problem is that the salmon in the farms are more susceptible to diseases and parasites.  So not only is the health of these farmed fish not that great (and can greatly effect the quality of the meat of the fish products that you purchase in the supermarket), but the wild salmon swimming through these waters are then exposed to all these diseases.  There is a fantastic video that I highly recommend – it is an hour long but really eye-opening and scary look into the political views on the health of our environment.  (I decided I should look into reviews about this film but everything that I found that had anything negative to say about the film was actually from salmon farmers- not surprisingly- and also found some newspaper articles about more recent sketchy moves by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.  Click on the photos above to see even more shocking stories around the farmed salmon industry.)

So that’s why I try to stick to the wild stuff. Anyway, Horseradish Honey Mustard Pecan Encrusted Salmon is a fantastic salmon recipe.  Sorry for the long name.  I should have included “dill” in there too…  This recipe was even approved by an amazing chef friend of mine who does not like their fish encrusted (I don’t know why; she didn’t tell me).

The weird thing is how sweet the horseradish becomes once baked – it was soooo hot when I was tasting the sauce beforehand.  If you want more spicy zing of horseradish, serve with our killer hot paleo horseradish sauce. 

Well, friends, I’d love to hear what you think about this one!

Horseradish Honey Mustard Pecan Encrusted Salmon

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• Author: Raj - www.ThePrimalDesire.com
• Total Time: 32 minute

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Description

Make sure to get a good sized fillet so that you will have leftovers for the next day to brag about!

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• ~0.8kg (28oz) wild salmon fillets
• 1/2 – 1 inch horseradish root (finely grated)
• 1 heaping Tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 heaping Tbsp honey
• 1 tsp dill
• 1/2 cup pecans (coarsely ground)
• ~1.5 tsp salt
• ~1.5 tsp garlic powder

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Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Mix horseradish, mustard, honey, and dill together in a bowl. This mixture is very runny, so I put it in the fridge for ~5 minutes to solidify a bit so it’s a little easier to use.
3. Line a cookie sheet with tin foil, shiny side up (I made the mistake of using my friend’s broiler pan, which was apparently a major pain to clean the skin off of afterwards).
4. Place salmon on tin foil, skin side down.
5. Lightly dust/sprinkle salt and garlic powder over the salmon.
6. Spoon mustard mixture over salmon and spread evenly.
7. Sprinkle pecans over salmon evenly.
8. Bake for ~10-13 minutes, or until salmon flakes easily with a fork.

• Prep Time: 5 min
• Cook Time: 10-13 min
• Category: Seafood