Cook\'s Country - 2019-06-07

26 COOK’S COUNTRY • JUNE/JULY 2019

DID YOU KNOW that you can cook
rice in a casserole dish in the oven?
It may sound strange, but we’ve had
success with this technique before, and
I wanted to use it to create a one-pan
dinner with rice, salmon, and broccoli.
Our testing has shown that the best
pretreatment for oven-baked rice is
rinsing it in a fi ne-mesh strainer to
get rid of excess surface starch and
then combining it with cold water in
a 13 by 9-inch baking dish. Tightly
covered with aluminum foil and baked
in a 400-degree oven, the rice cooks up
tender and fl uff y in about 40 minutes. I
just had to fi gure out how and when to
add salmon and broccoli to the equa-
tion—and how to fl avor them.
I started by pulling the rice out
of the oven after 30 minutes—about
10 minutes short of it being perfectly
cooked. After carefully removing the
foil (protecting myself from the hot
steam), I laid four salmon fi llets and
½ pound of broccoli fl orets on top of
the rice and returned the baking dish
to the oven. Ten minutes later, the rice
was perfectly cooked, but the broccoli
was crunchy and the salmon, though
cooked through, was pale and boring.
After some experimenting, I found
that switching to the broiler to cook
the fi sh and broccoli (and fi nish the
rice) gave me better results. In the
9 to 12 minutes it took to cook the
salmon to a perfect 125 degrees, the
tops of the fi llets picked up a little
color and the broccoli turned a lovely
deep brown.
My hybrid bake-broil method was
set; now I just had to work through
some details. Using chicken broth
instead of water to cook the rice gave
it more fl avor. Completely covering
the surface of the rice with the fi sh

and vegetables before broiling ensured

that there were no hard, crunchy bits

of exposed rice that dried up under

the broiler’s blast. Placing the salmon

around the edges of the dish rather than

in the middle helped all four fi llets cook

more evenly. And adding sliced shiitake

mushrooms to the broccoli gave the

dish more savory oomph.

Finally, I created a fl avorful

stir-together sauce to brush onto the

salmon before broiling. The sauce

gave the salmon fi llets a sweet, tangy,

complex punch of fl avor and helped

the tops caramelize into beautifully

browned, sticky-crisp crusts. Reserving

a portion of the sauce before brushing

meant that I had a tasty condiment

to pass at the table. What made this

supper even more appealing? Know-

ing that cleanup would be easy.

ONE PAN

Glazed

Salmon

with

Broccoli

and Rice

This easy one-dish

salmon supper is

bolstered with potent

Asian fl avors.

by Cecelia Jenkins

Our stir-together sauce

caramelizes under the

broiler, becoming an

ultrafl avorful glaze.

Steam the Rice; Then Broil the Fish and Vegetables

First we bake the rice, covered, in

chicken broth.

Then we add the other elements,

glaze the fi sh, and broil.