Mediterranean Salmon Baked in Foil

Happy accidents happen in the kitchen all the time, you just have to be willing to pivot when they occur so the situation turns out, well, happy. Recently we placed an order for a whole salmon as we wanted to demonstrate knife techniques and we specifically told our butcher that we didn’t need a large salmon. What we ended up with was a beautiful 14-pound salmon. Not exactly small and we all looked at each other as if to say, now what? Time to make lemonade out of lemons or, in this case, multiple salmon recipes for you, the reader, to enjoy.

After filleting the salmon and breaking it down into enough for four different recipes, we needed to figure out what to do. I regularly make a haddock dish in foil that has shallots, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, olives and lemon. Why not shake that up a bit and see if we could make it work with salmon? Mediterranean Salmon Baked in Foil was the result, and it was a hit in our kitchen. The flavors were balanced, the salmon was the star and best of all, there was minimal cleanup since the entire dish was cooked in a foil packet.

Prepping the Ingredients

For the salmon, you want to find fillets that are nice and meaty and you want to remove the skin. Cutco’s Salmon Knife was made for this purpose and if you have never done it before, check out our How to Cut Salmon video.

Once you have the fillets, the rest of this dish is easy to make. There are just a few ingredients to prepare before you place everything into the oven.

Use a Trimmer to easily chop the plum tomatoes.

Shallots are a milder version of other onions, lending a more delicate flavor to dishes. For this recipe, use a Mini Cheese Knife to slice and chop them.

Kalamata olives have a meaty texture along with a rich and smoky flavor that pairs well with the salmon. The 5″ Petite Santoku is perfect for quickly chopping them into bite-size pieces.

Use a Trimmer to slice the lemons, leaving the peel on.

The only ingredient left to prepare is the parsley and I would recommend using a 7-5/8″ Petite Chef knife to cut the leaves from the stems and then rock-chop the herb into smaller pieces.

Making the Mediterranean Salmon

To make this recipe, start by laying out four long sheets of heavy-duty foil and brush each with olive oil. Place each salmon fillet onto one of the sheets and season with paprika, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Start the foil packet process by wrapping each end of the foil into a spiral, you should be able to still see the fish.

In a medium bowl, stir together the tomatoes, shallots, capers, olives, salt, parsley and lemon juice. Place the lemon slices over each salmon fillet in the foil packet and then spoon the tomato mixture over each piece of salmon.

Fold the sides of the foil over so the fish is completely covered and seal all the edges by rolling the foil over. The key to a moist piece of fish is to ensure the foil packet is completely closed to seal in the steam.  

Place the foil packets onto a large baking sheet and bake at 400 F until the salmon is just cooked through, approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer them to plates for serving (or you can remove the salmon and toppings from the packet to the plates). Be careful when opening the packets as steam will escape.

The final dish is so pretty with the beautifully cooked salmon, lemons, tomatoes, olives and capers, but it’s the taste that makes this recipe a go-to meal. Tender salmon and bold flavors deliver a taste explosion in every bite. Serve alongside rice or quinoa and you have a complete meal.