Quick Weeknight Meal: Salmon with Sweet-N-Hot Mustard Glaze

One of my favorite weeknight meals is salmon since it's usually a quick dish to prepare and it's healthy and delicious.  I'm always on the lookout for good ways to prepare it -- often I'll just bake it with some salt, pepper, and olive oil and then top it with pesto after it comes out of the oven.  This makes for an elegant dish that's very suitable for company, by the way.  (My favorite store-bought pesto is Bear Pond Farm, found at Whole Foods in the refrigerated section.  It's really fresh and delicious.)  Sometimes I'll top salmon with a nice chili rub.  But I think I've found my favorite salmon dish yet -- a sweet and hot mustard glazed salmon.  I love the mustard taste that blends so well with honey and a touch of heat.  This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Roasted Salmon with Sweet-N-Hot Mustard Glaze
(Courtesy of Robin Miller, "Quick Fix Meals")

Note: Since I usually make dinner for two adults, I cut this recipe in half and used one decent-sized salmon fillet.

Ingredients:
3 1/2 lb. salmon fillets, skin on and pinbones removed
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/2 cup honey
2 T. water
2 T. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. hot mustard powder (I substituted 1 tsp. of hot sauce for this ingredient and added 1 tsp. of regular mustard powder and it was delicious.)
1 tsp. garlic powder
2 T. chopped fresh dill

Method:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Either coat a baking dish with cooking spray or cover a broiling pan with aluminum foil and lightly coat it with cooking spray.  Place salmon on the dish or the pan and lightly season the fillet with salt and pepper.

Stir together the Dijon mustard, honey, water, lemon juice, hot mustard powder, and garlic powder.  Reserve half of this sauce for later.  Take the other half and spread on the salmon.

Bake the salmon for 15-20 minutes.

Stir the fresh dill into the reserved sauce.  When the salmon is done baking, top the salmon with the remaining sauce.

As you can see from the picture above, I added two side dishes -- stir-fried zucchini and garlic-butter noodles, both of which were delicious with the salmon.

Enjoy!