These aren’t sugar-free, to be clear. Not at all. But they pack a flavor punch, thus making a little go a long way.
First off, the item in the picture: cider syrup. Don’t buy this stuff, for heaven’s sake! It’s ridiculously expensive, costing anywhere from around $12 to $24 for a pint. Honestly! You can make your own instead, paying $4.99 for a gallon of cider that will yield that same amount. Just be sure that during cider season you buy a couple of gallons. It would be nice if you could get some unpasteurized cider from the farmers’ market, but most of us don’t have that option. Put the cider into a stainless-steel saucepan and boil it down until it’s syrupy. Keep an eye on it for the last little bit and turn the heat to low, as it’s easy to overdo it. (This is painfully-gotten wisdom–I ruined a pan once by letting the syrup go too long.) I got this idea originally from the wonderful cookbook Beat That by Ann Hodgman. (I reference her a lot..) Anyway, she says, “Now boil it and boil it and boil it, for way longer than you could have believed was possible.” You’ll get about a pint of cider syrup out of a gallon of cider, which means you get one-eighth of what you started out with. She says to strain the resulting syrup, but I don’t see any reason to do that. The original cider was all perfectly edible. You haven’t let any dead leaves fall into the pot, have you?
The cider syrup is great as a glaze on ham or pork or in any sauce that calls for apple juice. I like a small amount of it drizzled on the Dutch baby apple pancake I’ve started making for our Sunday breakfasts. Your other alternative any time you want a strong apple flavor is frozen apple juice concentrate. Notice on those glass bottles in the juice aisle (if you missed cider season) that you’re usually buying “juice from concentrate” anyway. So, follow me here: First the juice is boiled down to make a concentrate, thus taking out water. Then it’s reconstituted, thus adding the water back in. and sold in a bottle to you. You then cart that heavy glass bottle home. So why not just start with the concentrate to begin with? If I don’t have any cider syrup I try to always have a can or two of apple concentrate on hand, and I also do that with orange concentrate. These items are much cheaper than the reconstituted juices, keep forever in the freezer, and take up little space. Then when a recipe calls for a small amount of juice I have what I need. (I can never figure out what these recipe developers expect you to do, but perhaps most people have a variety of juices on hand. We don’t drink juice, though, so we need a fallback plan.)
Be aware that you should count cider syrup or any type of juice concentrate as having the same sugar content as any other syrup, basically 4 grams or 15 calories per teaspoon. (Yes, teaspoon.)
Here’s a delicious and unusual treatment for salmon that originally called for cider that you were supposed to boil down, so I switched that ingredient to the cider syrup or concentrate. I originally got the recipe from the great book by Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, which is a great memoir that you should totally, totally read. (And then you should read Delancey: A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, A Marriage. Unfortunately the marriage in the title has now come to an end, but the story is still great. The chapter about getting the Italian pizza oven out of the delivery truck is worth the whole price of the book.) You’ll notice that I have you brine the salmon for 15 minutes, a step I’ve added. You don’t have to do that, but it helps keep the salmon from oozing that awful white stuff (which is just a protein, but it looks gross) and also seasons it and aids in keeping it moist. I have you bake the salmon rather than cook it on top of the stove.
Cider-Cream Sauced Salmon
Ingredients
- 3 pounds salmon or 8 oz. per person
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1-2 shallots diced as finely as humanly possible
- 1/2 cup cider syrup or 3/4 cup apple juice concentrate plus more for brushing on the salmon
- Oil for brushing salmon anything but olive oil is fine; I don't think the flavor of olive oil goes with the flavors in this recipe
- 1 cup heavy cream Yes, heavy cream. If you don't want to use that, make something else!
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. While that's going on, brine your salmon in a glass or ceramic baking dish (I have a nice big Pyrex one) with two tablespoons of salt to one quart of water. I just mix it right in the dish and then slide the salmon in, skin side up. Let sit for 15 minutes. Since it's such a short brining time you don't need to refrigerate it. When the 15 minutes are up, dump out the brine, pat the fish dry with paper towels, and flip it over so that it's skin side down. (Pat that side dry, too.) Brush it with oil and then with some of the cider syrup or concentrate. Bake for 15 minutes or so—it may need a bit longer. I don't like rare salmon! If you'd like more of a glazed top, you can broil it for a couple of minutes, but be sure you keep track of the time. Use your trusty instant-read digital thermometer to test the thickest part of the fish; I would recommend 130 degrees, but if you like your salmon on the rarer side you could go with 125 degrees. It will continue to cook some after you take it out.
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Meanwhile, melt the butter in a medium frying pan and saute the shallot until soft. Then add your cider syrup and cream and simmer while the salmon is cooking. Since the apple component is already reduced, you're just blending the flavors. If you're using the apple juice concentrate you might want to add that to the pan first and simmer a few minutes just to get it down a little, and then add the cream. When your salmon comes out of the oven there will be some nice juices in the pan; pour those into your sauce and whisk in.
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Put the salmon on a platter and the sauce in a gravy boat or bowl and serve.
Recipe Notes
Very, very good with plain sliced sweet potatoes that have been baked or microwaved until soft. You don't need to gussy them up. Some type of green vegetable or just a big salad will go great. If you wanted to carry out the apple theme you could make your salad dressing with apple cider vinegar.
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#1May I be really obnoxious here and point out that maple syrup isn’t all that “natural”? It starts out with a natural product, sure, the sap from a sugar maple, but then it’s processed. It takes 40 gallons of the sap to produce 1 gallon of the syrup, so that’s a boatload of boiling. After that it’s filtered. That’s a lot of processing!
#2Now boil it and boil it and boil it, for way longer than you could have believed was possible.” You’ll get about a pint of cider syrup out of a gallon of cider, which means you get one-eighth of what you started out with. She says to strain the resulting syrup, but I don’t see any reason to do that.
These are quotes from your blogs about what makes something “processed” and the underlying tone is that you’re not a fan of “processed” foods. However it seems you are doing the same thing to cider to make syrup: boiling extensively though you did skip the filtering process.
So boiled, boiled, boiled/ filtered tree sap bad, but boiled, boiled, boiled / filtered optional cider good?
Hello Cathy–
Thanks for your reply–I didn’t realize until recently that there were comments on this location on my website. I didn’t actually say that I “wasn’t a fan” of maple sugar, as I use it in my coffee every morning. I’m just saying that it’s sugar, just like all other sweeteners, and that it isn’t coming straight from the tree. But, as I pointed out, you’ll use less of it than regular table sugar b/c it’s so expensive. My cider syrup wasn’t touted as any more “natural” than any other sweetener, but just as another strongly-flavored syrup that you could use sparingly. Anyway, thanks for writing, and I hope I cleared up the confusion.