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Looking for another easy dish to meat your protein count and tickle the taste buds? I give you Browned Butter Honey Garlic Salmon! Only 3 main ingredients in under 15 minutes.
Browned Butter Honey Garlic Salmon is a Cafe Delites original recipe! Salmon steaks pan fried in browned butter infused with garlic and honey, then grilled/broiled for an extra 6 minutes for extra golden, crispy and caramelised finish. The browned butter cooks right into this salmon and the honey and garlic give it such a beautiful flavour and charred finish in the oven.
Browned Butter Honey Garlic Salmon
When I hear browned butter…I hear complicated, but this recipe is simple and easy. Salmon broiled with a salty-sweet glaze. Just like we use in our Easy Honey Garlic Pork Chops You’ll be licking the plate clean! Garlic butter has a taste to die for, however, when you take it that step further and brown that butter first, then add your garlic to infuse all of those flavours into your browned butter? WOW! The combination is incredible! I looked online everywhere for something like this and couldn’t BELIEVE it when I found out this flavour combo hadn’t been explored!
I do have a few tips though!
How to make Browned Butter Honey Garlic Salmon:
- The first step is to have all of your ingredients together and ready for you when you start cooking. This recipe moves fast.
- Adjust your oven shelf at least 8-inches away from the heat element in your oven to prevent burning.
- When browning butter, the heat needs to be on medium-high. After your butter melts, watch it continuously while it bubbles up, then foams and starts to give off a nutty aroma. At this point, stir it occasionally and swirl the pan carefully until the foam subsides. You’ll be left with a dark golden hue and some charred bits on the bottom of your pan. From here you need to act quick.
- Allow the honey to melt completely though the browned butter before adding garlic.
- When adding lemon juice, be careful of the butter splattering.
- Add the salmon with the top facing up (skin-side down) and baste it while it cooks in the skillet.
- Before broiling, you can add lemon wedges around your salmon if you like your sauces to take on more of a citrus flavour OR leave them out for a milder taste.
- While broiling, keep an eye on the salmon as it can easily go from slightly charred to burnt very quickly. Put your timer on for 3 minutes and keep watching from there.
This salmon takes on a whole new level of crispy and caramelised on the edges, while staying juicy on the inside. If you’ve never tried browning your butter with salmon…try it! Serve with greens and extra garlicky brown butter sauce…
WATCH US MAKE the Browned Butter Honey Garlic Salmon RIGHT HERE!
Need more salmon ideas? Try these:
Seared Salmon with Avocado Tomato Salsa
Puff Pastry Salmon and Spinach Parcels
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Browned Butter Honey Garlic Salmon
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/4 cup honey
- 3 cloves garlic, minced*
- 1-2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice or juice of half a lemon
- 4 fillets wild caught salmon – about 1/2 pound or 250 grams each skin off or on
- 1 large Lemon cut into wedges to serve
- 2 pinches salt to taste
Instructions
- Arrange oven shelf about 8-inches away from heat element in your oven. Preheat your oven to broil (or grill in Australia).
- Place butter in a cast iron skillet (or an oven-proof frying pan if you don’t have a skillet). Cook over medium heat, stirring and swirling pan occasionally for about 3 minutes, or until the foam settles; the butter begins to change in colour to golden brown and has a nutty fragrance.
- Pour in the honey and let it dissolve into the butter. Then add in the garlic and sauté for about 1 minute until fragrant. Add in the lemon juice; stir well to combine all of the flavours together.
- Add the salmon steaks to the butter in the pan; cook each fillet (skin-side down if there’s any skin) for 3-4 minutes or until golden, while basting the tops with the pan juices. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Add the lemon wedges around the salmon. Transfer the pan to your oven to broil / grill for a further 5-6 minutes, or until the tops of the salmon are nicely charred.
- To serve, drizzle with the reserved brown butter sauce. Serve with steamed vegetables; over rice or with a salad.
Notes
- Pre-heat oven to 410°F (210°C).
- Follow Steps 2-3 as above.
- At Step 4 when adding the fillets into the skillet, transfer to oven to bake for 4 minutes (depending on the size and thickness of your fillets).
- Broil (or grill) for 2 minutes to get nice charred edges.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Another recipe that surely my family would like. This butter honey garlic looks really awesome! Thank you for this. Cannot wait to try it!
Just made this for dinner and paired it with a spinach, tomato and garlic pasta. It taste amazing together.
I think I let it broil a little to long so I will be making this again very soon. I was so tired of eating regular salmon.
Absolute best salmon ever! This is my go-to recipe when cooking to impress. Love it! Thanks Karina.
I’m always scared of making fish! This recipe looked so easy and yummy, so I thought I might be able to pull it off. It was amazing! My hubby and I loved it. I will definitely be making it again. Since some people mentioned the sauce carmelizing too much, I added in a bit more of all liquids and it was perfect. Now on to the browned butter salmon,……! Thank you!!!
Thank you so much, we love it! I cooked it today but i put a little bit of soy sauce on the glaze. I also made separate glaze coz my son loves gravy and he thought it is gravy. He loves the salmon with a lot of glaze even on his rice !! I partnered mine with quinoa salad. Will definitely make it again…soon!
This is the first time I have ever rated a recipe I have gotten online. This cooked up in a matter of minutes, like ten minutes, start to finish. I made it for myself and my eleven year old son. He likes salmon as long as it doesn’t taste “fishy”. Neither do I. We have been eating filets cut from this one fish all week. I had been using the same recipe all week and was burned out on it. We were down to our last three filets. I used this recipe. The other nights there was a slight fish taste. With this recipe, from the same dish, the last servings of the week, the fish had no fishy taste. It was delicious. It was flaky with a carmelized crisp. It was subtley both sweet and tangy. It was not overpowering. It was amazing.
hi, it looks delicious. but since i don’t have lemon, can i use lime instead? hope forward to your answering. thank you!
What makes this recipe great is how complex and delicious the flavors are, but how easy it is! I don’t think that I’ve ever managed to actually mess it up, which I can’t say for many other recipes. I think I must have made this like ten times by now. My whole family loves it. Sometimes we eat it with rice and seaweed like it’s sushi
And I always lick the spoon that I use to baste the salmon!
Amazing! I was gifted a couple fillets of wild-caught chinook salmon a few days ago and by golly this was the way to cook them. I cut down the honey by half (I actually only had cinnamon honey, but that only made it better I think), and added fresh thyme and lemon zest in with the garlic, which was perfect for my taste — gave it kind of an herby sweetness that doesn’t go overboard.
I didn’t have a cast iron pan, so I just did the frying bit in a deep skillet and then quickly transferred the fillets to a glass dish lined with aluminum foil before sticking it into the oven. Worked great.
Love this recipe. Thanks so much for sharing it – Joe