Seared Salmon with a Balsamic Glaze

Time for another Feeding Friendship post!

The secret ingredient this time is:

Balsamic Vinegar!

For this round, I chose to cook Seared Salmon with a Balsamic Glaze. The recipe can be found here. If you view the recipe, you'll see that the active time is 10 minutes and the total time is 15 minutes. Yep, it's THAT fast! So fast that I didn't even take any pictures during the preparation/cooking. 

The reason I chose balsamic vinegar as the secret ingredient was because my mom received some flavored balsamic vinegars (dark cherry, citrus, fig and white balsamic with pear) as a gift and this was my attempt to help her decide what to do with them. I think any of the flavors could feasibly be used in this recipe, but citrus is probably the most conventional. If you use a citrus flavored vinegar, you could probably leave out the lemon juice, even, or at least scale it back.

The recipe is for 4 fillets, but we only needed two for the hubs and me! Here's "my" recipe:

• Two 6 oz salmon fillets (wild caught is best!)
• 1/8 c baslamic vinegar
• 1/8 c water
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons brown sugar
• Vegetable oil*

1. Stir together vinegar, water, lemon juice, and brown sugar.
2. Season salmon with salt and pepper.
3. Heat a pan to medium-high, add oil.
4. Once oil is heated, place salmon in the pan, skin side up, and turn heat to high. Cook salmon for 3-4 minutes
5. Turn salmon over carefully (tongs were well!) and finish cooking the fillets.
6. Move salmon to a plate (or plates).
7. Cook glaze mixture in the same pan until it is reduced by about 1/3. 
8. Spoon glaze over salmon fillets.  

Served with sauteed spinach!

 *Be sure to use vegetable oil. I may or may not have smoked out the better part of the house because I used EVOO. May or may not....