Make use of the oven for some hands-free, low effort meal prep with this simple yet delicious marinade for salmon that also doubles as a glaze.

Time: 2/5
The oven gives you ample opportunity to telescope your tasks

Effort: 2/5
Mix everything up and shove it in

Same stuff, different day

The honey miso salmon recipe holds a special place in my heart. It’s one of the first meal preps that I surprised myself with in terms of everything that mattered – the taste, the appearance, the effort to reward ratio. I’m so proud of it that it had the honour of being the inaugural post for this blog.

Now, one of the ways I can meal prep for 10 years while still keeping things fresh is by recombining elements of one recipe with another. For example, the same miso honey glaze that worked wonders with salmon is also excellent with chicken. Or, the same onion and dashi sauce can be used as a base to make either Gyudon if you stew beef in it (also check out the improved version!), or Butadon if you use pork instead. Essentially, same sauce different protein. 

I’m happy to tell you that the same trick works in reverse as well! By using the same protein and keeping the general structure of the recipe the same, you can introduce variation into your dinner rotation by switching up the sauce. In fact, I’ve done this before by marinating the salmon with teriyaki sauce instead of miso and honey.

This time, I took the oven-roasted salmon meal prep template down a more Western road and tried out a honey mustard marinade. Long story short, it was pretty good! The oven and rice let me cook parts of the meal hands-free while I prepared the vegetables, and since I lined the baking sheet with foil I had very little cleanup to do. It’s the exact sort of high effort-to-reward prep that I’m looking for when I meal prep.

In fact, you can daisy-chain these two tricks to get even more variation – having made salmon with a honey mustard marinade, I’m already planning to use the same marinade on some chicken thighs. I’ll keep you posted for when that happens.

Dramatis Personae

Served 7.

Salmon – 1200g

I get my salmon already cubed and frozen. It’s sold this way much cheaper than whole filets, which is great because I try hard to eat more fish for the health benefits. The increased surface area is also nice for picking up flavour from the marinade, which is why I keep going back to this preparation.

I’m trying to roast them at a higher temperature than before, so I can hopefully get some delicious caramelised honey on the surface while keeping the insides moist. I’d say I succeeded partially – the chunks being so small, I probably need to broil them to get what I want and I do not have a broiler.

Unfortunately, that does mean the salmon is more vulnerable to overcooking, and they’re bound to dry out if you microwave them. Your exact cooking time will depend on how you like your salmon, and the size of your pieces.

Marinade/glaze

2 tablespoons each of honey and Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon of garlic paste, and a teaspoon of salt. How much salt you add depends on how salty you like your food, and how much sodium is in your mustard and garlic.

You can’t really taste and adjust for seasoning for raw fish, so you will need to go by feel and experience. Having said, it’s always better to err on the side of caution and add salt later than to over-season.

Vegetables – ~1500g

Indian lettuce is my SO’s favourite, so I cook it pretty often. Just a simple stir fry with a clove or two of garlic and some salt in a bit of vegetable oil, nothing fancy. The amount you see in the pictures is actually closer to 1800g, because I had two meals with rice and protein but no veggies which I wanted to complete.

It was probably the most vegetables I tried to cook in one single batch! It was pretty hairy at first, but my biggest wok handled it like a champ.

Executive summary

1. The day before cooking, mix marinade ingredients and salmon together in a big mixing bowl.
2. On the day of cooking, make rice and preheat oven to 200C/400F
3. Line baking sheet with foil and parchment paper. Roast salmon chunks for 8 minutes, or until lightly browned.
4. While salmon is roasting, wash and stir fry vegetables.
5. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

Nothing special to see here. Dump everything into the bowl and spatulate until well mixed, cover and refrigerate overnight.

Here I am the next day. That’s a lot of Indian lettuce, but some of it is going to two other meals.

Let’s take care of the cook first with a pre-dinner snack. This combo is a recent favourite! It hits all the notes: sweetness and meatiness from the shrimp, umami and richness from the cheddar, saltiness and crunch from the cracker, and the freshness and sharpness of the spring onions.

Protein first, to free my hands up. This is half of the batch. You really don’t want to crowd the baking sheet, because a lot of flavour comes from browning the glaze and that can’t happen if there’s too much fish to heat up simultaneously.

Washing the vegetables while the first batch of salmon is cooking. I’m starting to have doubts about whether my wok can fit all of this …

A PSA to always wash your veggies. Look closely at the sedimentation at the bottom of – this is dust, dirt and pesticides that would otherwise go down your gullet.

First batch of salmon coming along nicely. Let’s get the second batch in and move on to cooking the lettuce and hope everything fits.

Have faith, persevere, and you shall triumph! The trick is to keep tucking in the vegetables around the sides towards the bottom, where they will gradually displace the veg that has always cooked and shrunk down.

Dinner is served! And lunch for the week, too.

The brown bits are the best.

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