Gravlax is a Scandinavian dish consisting of raw salmon cured in salt, sugar, and dill.

During the Middle Ages, gravlax was made by fishermen who salted the salmon and lightly fermented it by burying it in the sand above the high-tide line. The word gravlax comes from the Scandinavian word grav, which means literally “grave” or “hole in the ground”, and lax (or laks), which means “salmon”, thus gravlax is “salmon dug into the ground”.

If smoked salmon is more to your liking, we cover that here.

Make a mixture of sea salt, non-refined sugar, dill and pepper (optional).  I use a salt to sugar ratio of about 3:1, but you can adjust this to your taste (don’t worry, there will be very little salt or sugar in the finished product).

Thoroughly pack salmon filets with the salt mixture and either bury it in the salt bowl or double bag it as I have done here. Refrigerate for at least 2 days, checking occasionally to see if additional salt mixture is needed.

Once cured, rinse the salmon in lots of cold fresh water, pat dry and slice very thin.  Serve as an appetizer garnished with crème fraîche and caviar, or in scrambled eggs.

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