Christmas Eve

Honey Glazed Salmon for Christmas Eve: A Whole Side in Twenty Minutes

A side of salmon is the easiest centrepiece of the whole holiday and the one most often ruined by its glaze. Honey burns before fish cooks, so the glaze goes on late, in two coats, during the last six minutes in a hot oven. Reduce it first on the hob so it clings. Check the fish by cutting into the thickest part, not by the clock. Acacia honey, clementine, a little soy and ginger: the version below feeds six and takes twenty minutes from tray to table.

RicettaThree glazesWhy the glaze goes on latePlan the eveningChristmas Eve in our houseWhich honeyServing and leftoversDomande

Three glazes from the same four tablespoons of honey

The method does not change: reduce on the hob, brush on twice in the last six minutes. The flavour does. All three start with 4 tablespoons of acacia honey for a 1 kg side.

The hot honey version uses the no-cook infusion method from our hot honey guide if you have a jar made already; otherwise the chilli simply goes into the pan. The clementine glaze also works on a joint of ham and on roast carrots, and the soy version is a close cousin of the one on our ali di pollo al miele e soia.

Why the glaze goes on late

Most of the sugar in honey is fructose, and fructose browns faster than table sugar. Eva Crane, who founded the International Bee Research Association, reported that fructose reacts more strongly with amino acids at high temperatures than glucose does, so a fructose bake comes out darker than a sucrose one and has to leave the oven earlier to avoid burning (Crane, “Learning about honey through fructose”, Bee World 63(4), 1982). Salmon flesh supplies the amino acids. Brush a honey glaze on at the start of an 18-minute roast at 200 degrees and the sugars blacken on the ridges of the fish while the centre is still raw. Brush it on for the last six minutes and the same reaction gives you an amber lacquer, which is the whole point.

Reducing the glaze first matters for the same reason. A thin glaze runs off the fish onto the paper and burns there; a glaze simmered until it coats a spoon stays where you brush it and only has to colour, not thicken, in the oven. If your honey has crystallised, the simmer dissolves it; there is no need to soften the jar prima di tutto.

Honey glazes are not just about colour. A 2023 review of marinades concluded that “honey marinade showed better properties compared to other ingredients” in the chemical, physical and sensory measures the included studies used, against sugar, salt and lactic acid marinades (Mat and Sarbon, in Recent Advances in Global Meliponiculture, 2023). The studies it reviewed were mostly on meat rather than fish and the abstract gives no figures, so treat it as a reason to prefer honey over sugar in the pan, not as a claim about this recipe.

Plan the evening backwards

Christmas Eve cooking is a timing problem more than a skill problem. Work back from the moment you want to sit down.

• MorningMake the glaze and keep it covered in the fridge. Slice the clementines. Pin-bone the salmon if the fishmonger has not.
• Minus 60Potatoes on. Salmon out of the fridge and onto its lined tray, oiled and salted, clementines laid on; cover loosely.
• Minus 30Oven on to 200 degrees. Glaze out of the fridge; it will have set, so warm it for a minute until it brushes.
• Minus 22Salmon in. Greens in the steamer at minus 10.
• Minus 14First coat of glaze.
• Minus 11Second coat.
• Minus 5Check with a knife. Out, rest on the tray, herbs on.
• ZeroSlide onto the board. Pour something cold. Sit down.

Christmas Eve in our house

In Romania, where our family’s hives are, Christmas Eve is the last day of the Advent fast, and the fast is taken seriously. The ethnologist Delia Suiogan told Radio Romania International that “it is very important not to eat at all on Christmas Eve, for purification”, while the most important meals of the year are being prepared in the same kitchen (Chiorpec, “Christmas in Romania”, RRI, 2022). Fish was the food that sat on the line between fasting and feasting, and in our family it was the first proper plate after the carol singers had been and gone.

The honey came from the autumn jars, usually acacia because it was the mildest and did not fight the fish. Nobody called it a glaze. It was brushed on at the end because that was when there was a free hand, and it was the right instinct for the wrong reason. Here in the UK, salmon has taken the place of the river fish, and we have kept the late brush.

Which honey for a glaze

Four tablespoons of honey carry this dish, so the jar is tasted. We glaze with miele di acacia for three reasons. It is pale, so the glaze stays amber rather than mahogany and the clementine shows through. It is mild and faintly vanilla-like, so the citrus, soy and ginger lead and the honey rounds them off rather than shouting. And it is slow to crystallise and pours thin, so it measures and brushes easily and reduces evenly in the pan. Linden against acacia is the comparison to read if you want a glaze with a floral edge: linden gives a faintly minty, lime-blossom note that is lovely with the mustard and dill version.

For a bolder, darker glaze, use miele di girasole, which has more body and a buttery depth that suits the hot honey and lime version; it is one of the three jars in the Selezione di prodotti per barbecue e grigliate alongside acacia and wildflower, which was put together for exactly this kind of cooking, and our grilling guide covers the same glaze on a barbecue. Heather is too strong here: magnificent on cheese, overbearing on fish.

Serving, leftovers and who it is for

A glazed side wants plain company: crushed new potatoes with butter and dill, steamed greens with lemon, a sharp salad. Start with something from miele con vino e formaggio if the evening is long, and finish the board with the acacia and blue cheese pairing, since the jar is already open. If you are buying Scottish salmon for the occasion, the name is a UK protected geographical indication: the register entry changed from Scottish Farmed Salmon PGI to Scottish Salmon PGI in April 2024 (UK protected food and drink names register), so a fish labelled with either name is farmed in Scotland under that specification.

Leftovers: cool the fish within an hour, cover and refrigerate, and eat it cold the next day flaked into a salad or warmed through gently in a covered dish; we do not keep cooked salmon beyond two days. The glaze itself keeps a week in a jar in the fridge and is very good on roast carrots.

Domande