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Tandoori Grilled Salmon Steaks
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Mar 31, 2025
These salmon steaks get a double blast of flavor from a quick soak in garlic and ginger water as well as a fragrant marinade, optionally thickened with egg and chickpea flour. Don’t own a tandoor? Thread the salmon on metal skewers, then suspend over fire bricks for improvised “grateless grilling.”
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0:00
If you've ever dined at an Indian restaurant, you've probably tasted tandoori chicken
0:04
Well, the ancient techniques of complex marinating and high-heat vertical roasting also work great for seafood. Up next, America's favorite fish meets traditional Indian barbecue
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I give you tandoori salmon. Tandoori secret number one, the aromatic wash. Start with
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Finely chopped garlic. And chopped fresh ginger. And puree them together in a food processor
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Next, add cold water. Process to mix. And pour the aromatic wash over these gorgeous wild salmon steaks
0:53
This aromatic wash actually serves two purposes. First, it adds a base layer of flavor
0:59
And second, in the age before widespread refrigeration, it was a way to freshen up the fish
1:05
Tandoori secret number two, the spice paste. This one begins with chopped fresh onion
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fresh ginger, fresh garlic, salt, freshly ground black pepper
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Turmeric. Ground cumin. And a spice you may not be familiar with
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It's called ajwain. It has a kind of bitter, licorice-y flavor. Carraway seed makes a great substitute
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Now, grind these ingredients to a coarse paste, running your processor in short bursts
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In India, they have these giant lava stone spice grinders that are powered by electric motors
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Next you want to add a whole egg Then add strained yogurt or thick Greek yogurt
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One final ingredient, chickpea flour, known in India as baison. Chickpea flour is made from ground chickpeas or garbanzo beans
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It has an earthy flavor, and it helps thicken up the marinade so that it will cook into a savory crust
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Spread about a third of the spice paste on the bottom of a non-reactive baking dish
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Then fish your salmon steaks out of the aromatic wash and arrange them on top of the spice paste
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Marinate the salmon in the refrigerator for four to six hours. Meanwhile, let me show you the Tondor
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It's the newest addition to the Primal Grill collection, and I am absolutely thrilled to have it
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Inside the stainless steel casing is a tall ceramic urn. The walls are about two inches thick
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There's a vent at the bottom. and due to the unique shape of the tandoor
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the way the walls come up and then sort of close in a narrowish opening at the top
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this baby will generate and hold a tremendous amount of heat. We're actually cooking at 700 to 800 degrees
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This is sort of a half-Mississippi fire inside. One of the things that makes tandoori so unique
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is that you grill vertically, not horizontally. and you cook the fish on this long, slender, metal spit
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So what you want to do is take a piece of fish and pierce it on the diagonal
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And to keep the salmon steaks from sliding off the skewer, place an onion at the end
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Let me wash my hands. Take the skewer with the tandoori salmon
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and insert the entire skewer in the tandoor. The bottom of the skewer rests on the bottom
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Cooking time is really fast, somewhere between 5 and 8 minutes. The tandoor is an unbelievably efficient
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live-fire cooking device. It cooks not only with the direct heat from the charcoal
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but with the radiant heat from the thick ceramic walls. So how do you know when the fish is done
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If you look closely, you can actually see the juices bubble. To take the skewer out, use the hook on another tandoor skewer and lift it out
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And Indian restaurants will always have a rack for hanging the tandoor
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And traditionally, the tandoori meats are hung, rested for a few minutes
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and then put on the platter and serve. Be very careful not to touch the tops of these hooks
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They are excruciatingly hot. Take it from me. So how do you make tandoori salmon if you don't have a tandoor
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I give you another primal grill first, tandoori salmon on a gas grill
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Skewer the salmon on these wide, flat, metal skewers. In North America, most of our grilling is done on grills with grill grates
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But if you cook tandoori salmon this way the chickpea flour coating would stick to the grill grate Now in India direct grills would not actually have grill grates They be metal box with the coals at the
6:07
bottom, and you would stretch the kebabs across the sides of the grill. What I've done here is
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arrange two metal bars across the grill grate. So when I take the salmon
6:19
and I put it on the grill, the fish is actually suspended above the grate
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That way the chickpea flour spice paste cooks without sticking to the grill grate
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Close the grill. Cooking time here, about six to eight minutes per side
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And once the salmon steaks are browned on the bottom, Simply turn them over
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And you can see the beauty of using these flat skewers is that it holds the salmon steak stable
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So we've got another four to six minutes of cooking. Meanwhile, let's plate up our tandoori salmon
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And one final touch. Indian's base tandoori with melted butter just before serving
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It's a tandoori extravaganza on Primal Grill. Let's see how we did
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First of all, it's really gorgeous. And if you look, you can see that chickpea flour marinade cooked to a hard crust
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And the fish is incredibly moist. Mmm. there's a peppery bite from the ginger
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kind of tang of the yogurt. It's like an Indian spice market in your mouth
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