Perfect Parchment-Baked Salmon

I love salmon; salmon on a bagel, salmon in salad, salmon in pasta… You get the idea. But, my husband does not like salmon, not even a little bit. He has a shellfish allergy. So, maybe he has incindentaly written off all food that comes from water, whether it is a shellfish or not. Or maybe he just doesn’t like salmon… Either way, I’ve been trying different salmon recipes, desperate to find something my husband would like. Then one day, on The Pioneer Woman website I found a chef named Heather who cooks with “deliciously allergen free recipes”, and I was overjoyed. So, I tried a variation of her “How to Perfectly Cook Salmon” recipe, you can find my step-by-step below.

1/2 cup Thinly Sliced Red Onion

Parsley, For Sprinkling

How to do it, aka. INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375, and prepare two large ovals of parchment paper and fold them in half.

Now, prepare your vegetables. Slice the potatoes very thin, you’ll need about 16 slices. Slice the lemon very thin, you’ll need 4-6 slices of lemon (note: my lemon was very big, so I only needed 4 slices.) Trim the white off the bottom of the asparagus, and cut the asparagus in half. Chop some thin slices of red onion. Finely chop about 2 tablespoons of parley for sprinkling.

Place the thinly sliced pieces of potato on the bottom half of the parchment paper, and sprinkle with a light coat of oil.

Sprinkle the potatoes with parsley.

Add the asparagus pieces…

…and red onion slices.

Now, drizzle another light coat of olive oil.

And sprinkle a little more parsley.

Add salt and pepper, to taste.

Now, it is salmon time! Place the salmon on top of the vegetable bed you have prepared. (I leave the skin on, but you don’t have to. I find it easier to remove the skin after the salmon has been cooked.)

And top the salmon off with lemon slices.

Now you will be folding the parchment paper over, like a calzone. So, first fold the top half of the parchment paper over your salmon…Next, start folding and pinching the edges of the parchment paper, so it creates a little cocoon for your salmon. You may have to finagle the parchment paper a little.

Transfer your salmon cocoons/parchment calzones to a baking sheet, and bake them for 20 minutes on the center rack in the oven. If you are making more or less than 2 salmon cocoons you might want to adjust the cooking time, for example; if I was only preparing one salmon cocoon I would only bake it for 14 minutes.

When the time is up, remove your creation from the oven and serve it in the paper. You can rip the paper open, or unfold the paper.

I broke mine open, so you could see what the inside should look like.