Master Gravlax Recipe

From Cooking for Engineers.

Ingredients: (For every 1 lb of -- fatty, fresh, wild -- salmon):

• 2 Tbsp Kosher salt
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• Massive amounts of dill (at least a handful)

Method:

1. Go over filet carefully in good light, run fingers over likely spots for pin bones, and remove them with tweezers. If you have trouble finding and removing the bones, drape the trouble spot, skin side down, over your hand to bend the filet and help expose the bone ends.
2. Lay out filet, meat side up, on generous sheet of plastic wrap, about 3 or 4 times the length of the filet.
3. Mix salt, sugar, and pepper in a bowl, and spoon it out over the filet and along the sides of the filet.
4. Gently pat the mixture down into the moist flesh of the fish.
5. Pile high with dill.
6. Use plastic wrap to wrap the fish-salt-sugar-pepper-dill sandwich (which can be open faced or not, depending on your supplies), reasonably tightly, and seal reasonably well.
7. Cure, refrigerated, for 48 to 72 hours, sitting in a baking dish or baking tray (depending on size and dimensions), flipping every 12 hours. Package will leak after a few hours of curing.
8. When curing is done, remove salmon from package and lightly and gently rub and rinse.
9. Let sit for a few hours in refrigerator uncovered, to develop pellicle.
10. To serve, thinly slice on bias slanting toward tail end of filet, if it can be determined. Serve slices on bread, seasoned as desired.