Try Lily’s Sticky Salmon dish

Hello Lincoln intern Lily Bowen serves up Sticky Salmon in the UoL Budget Bites series. 

This is aimed at students or anyone who wants to get into cooking for themselves or just try something new. Using simple ingredients, these are meals that can be batch-cooked for a busy week going into the last semester of university. 

Over to Lily…

This sticky salmon dish is inspired by my friend Katie. It takes me back to a fun ‘Come Dine with Me’ style evening when a group of friends cooked a sticky chicken dish together. That night was the introduction to what we call Katie’s secret sauce recipe – the one I am going to share with you now.

Served alongside a mix of fried vegetables and couscous, this recipe requires no advanced cooking skills and can be made in under 30 minutes.

Ingredients:

• ½ a white onion
• 1 red pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic 
• A handful of chopped broccoli
• A handful of chopped white cabbage
• 1 salmon fillet
• ¾ cup of couscous (can be rice instead)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce 
• 4 tbsp honey 
• 2 tbsp ketchup 
• 1 tsp sesame seed oil (not essential)

Method:

1. Mix the soy sauce, honey, ketchup and sesame seed oil in a cup until it becomes a mixture and leave to the side.
2. Chop all vegetables (they can be as chunky or as thinly diced as you like).
3. Once all are chopped, heat a pan on medium heat and add a tbsp of sunflower oil/olive oil and the chopped vegetables and fry for 10 minutes.
4. As this is frying, boil the kettle and place the couscous in a bowl.
5. Once boiled, add the hot water, just half a centimetre over the couscous, and place a tea towel over the bowl.
6. Turn the pan with the vegetables onto a low heat or off to keep them warm.
7. Using a separate pan, add 1 tsp of sunflower oil and heat to low-medium heat.
8. Add the salmon fillet to the pan and flip every 2-3 mins.
9. Once the salmon has changed to a light pink colour and looks nearly cooked, add the prepared soy sauce mixture to the pan.
10. Turn heat to low and cover pan with a glass lid and let the sauce thicken.
11. Once the sauce is bubbling, chop the salmon into pieces (size is a preference) and mix the sauce in with the salmon.
12. Cover with glass lid for further 3 mins.
13. When the sauce is sticking to the salmon, that is when it is ready to come off the heat.
14. Add all fried vegetables, couscous and salmon to a bowl and serve with a light drizzle of soy sauce on top.

This recipe can be adapted to different meat such as chicken fillets or even sausages, and the couscous can be swapped out for rice. Hope you enjoy!