Baked salmon filet might just be one of the easiest and most common weeknight dinner recipes, but when you take that very same crowd-pleasing recipe that your friends and family love, and turn it into Braided Salmon, you’ll have on hand a stunning, show-stopping, dinner table centerpiece that’s no longer a weeknight recipe but even a special occasion piece de resistance.

The only change you’ll really need to make is that you’ll have to swap your regular salmon filet for a skinless one, and luckily that is easily and quite affordably available at Fresh Express Online. Pair it with some roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes or- my favourite- wasabi and soy stir-fried soba noodles, a ponzu dressed salad and some edamame. 

The skinless salmon filet I order from Fresh Express Online is from Norway, and comes ready to cook. Because my freezer isn’t deep or wide, I schedule the delivery for the very day that I’ll be cooking it. Braiding the salmon somehow shrinks the length a bit, and therefore allows me to fit the fish into the fridge while I marinate it. I find that the braiding also helps cook the salmon more evenly, and manages to contain the marinade in the nooks and crevices. 

Here are the 5 easy steps to make braided salmon: 

1. Remove the little bit of excess fish on the very edge that’s extremely thin, and then cut the remaining filet into 3 equal, long strips.
2. Reserve that excess bit we removed in the beginning, dip it in your marinade and roll it up to look like a rose. The 3 main strips need to be placed on your baking tray and simply braided. 
3. Drizzle your marinade onto the braided salmon, making sure to get it into every nook and crevice. 
4. Marinate for at least 4 hours in the fridge or preferably overnight
5. Bake your salmon in pre-heated oven for 30-40 minutes, turning on the broiler in the last 5 minutes if you’d like some extra color.

You can use literally any marinade you like, but I recommend a combination of salt, fat, acid, heat and some sugar to bring out the natural sweetness of the fish. My favourite is some miso, soy sauce and yuzu koshu for the ‘salt’, some rice vinegar or lemon juice for the acid, a smidge of wasabi for heat (which also comes from the yuzu koshu), salmon already has plenty of fat in it so it doesn’t particularly need any more of it but I do enjoy the fragrance from a smidge of toasted sesame oil, and finally for the sugar, I use a combination of Mirin and honey. By all means, you do you. The salmon is your oyster.