Teriyaki Salmon with Julienne Vegetables in a Pouch

My 16 year-old daughter, Sonia, gives the impression of being a picky eater.  In actuality, she's not.  She just won't eat a lot of foods unless her mom (me!) makes it.  She has never ordered any type of fish at a restaurant.  (Excluding shellfish or mollusks.)  She's the person that orders the one chicken dish on the menu at a seafood joint.  That being said, she absolutely loves this dish.  She'll eat it for dinner the night I make it and then even have the leftovers at another time.

This recipe comes together so easily and involves almost no clean up.  The salmon fillets and veggies are wrapped in aluminum foil and popped into the oven for 10 minutes.  And just when you thought it couldn't get any easier (you did think that, didn't you?), I've added an amazing, even faster and easier way to make this at the end of the recipe.

Here's what you need for each serving:

1 boneless, skinless salmon fillet (approximately 8 oz)

1/3 cup julienne* carrots

1/3 cup julienne* zucchini

1/3 cup julienne* red onion (which really are purple!)

1/3 cup julienne* red bell pepper (or any color you have on hand)

3 tablespoons of your favorite bottled Teriyaki sauce (I use Kikkoman original or ginger)

1 10x16 piece of aluminum foil for each fillet

* Julienne is the culinary term for something (usually vegetables) that are cut into thin long strips, similar to matchsticks.

Here's what you do:

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.  While the oven is heating, prepare your vegetables.

Slice your onions thinly.  

Clean bell pepper and slice into sticks

To julienne round vegetables, cut into tiles and then into strips

Since carrots would take longer to cook than the other veggies,  slice them very thinly

Here's your beautiful mix of vegetables!

Here are the fillets that I used.  They were pretty thick and even though I made one for each of us, we had leftovers.

Lay vegetables in the middle of the sheet of foil

Place the salmon on top of the vegetables

Drizzle 2 tablespoons of Teriyaki sauce  over both the salmon and vegetables

Wrap the foil securely on all sides like a package.  Do not wrap too close to the contents inside, you want some space inside for the steam to circulate and cook the fish and vegetables.

After baking the packets at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, the salmon teriyaki was ready!

Here's the finished product.  You can serve  it with some steamed rice or just like this.  Fast, healthy and yummy!
  

This recipe can be varied in so many ways.  You could add more ingredients to this such as mushrooms or very thin green beans.  The onions could be substituted with scallions, leeks or shallots.  Other good additions are julienne snow peas, broccoli florets or baby bok choy.  Almost any combination of vegetables would work in this dish and even the teriyaki sauce could be replaced with a squeeze of lemon, a pat of butter and salt and pepper to taste.  It could be garnished with thinly sliced scallions, chopped cilantro, parsley or if you go the butter and lemon route, a little dash of dill would be awesome!

Now here's the amazing, even faster and easier way to make this dish.  Place the ingredients in parchment paper instead of foil.  If you don't have parchment, you can place everything in a brown paper bag (the lunch bag size), wrap it up and place it on a microwave safe plate.  Microwave each packet for 4 minutes on high and that's all folks ... dinner is ready in about 15 minutes (depending on how many packets you're making of course).

Give it a try and let me know how it turns out.