Shiitake Salmon With Crispy Skin From Marc Matsumoto

Author Notes

This trick will make any salmon better: grilled, roasted, pan-seared, broiled. In fact, it will make just about anything you want to eat better: meatballs, pasta sauces, popcorn—even ice cream—all with the same Microplane you use to grate cheese and lemon zest, and the umami-packed dried mushrooms that will keep almost-forever in your pantry. No pre-soaking the mushrooms, no pulling out (or cleaning) the spice grinder, just grating as casually as you’d sprinkle salt. Here, we’re using Marc’s trick on Sally Schneider’s Genius Slow-Roasted Salmon, with an extra tip for crisping the salmon skin from Food52 community member Lune, but feel free to use it far and wide.

This one-ingredient umami magic has been sitting on Marc Matsumoto's blog No Recipes since the early aughts. After briefly considering the umami superpowers of MSG, Marc wrote, "I started thinking of other ingredients that are filled with umami enhancing glutamates. I remembered a few recent successes using shiitake powder in chicken sausage as well as a ragù and wondered what it would taste like encrusted on the salmon. Problem solved!”

A few more tips: Unless you try Marc’s trick on mildly flavored fish like sea bream or cod, you may not notice a mushroomy flavor—but the fish will taste emphatically, if somewhat mysteriously, more delicious. (If you’re curious, try sprinkling the mushroom on only half and taste the difference for yourself.)

Adapted from Marc Matsumoto’s No Recipes blog and Sally Schneider’s Slow-Roasted Salmon from A New Way to Cook (Artisan, 2003).

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Hear more about how this recipe came together, from Marc himself, on our podcast The Genius Recipe Tapes. —Genius Recipes