I tried Mark Bittman's 5-ingredient salmon recipe and got dinner ready in 10 minutes (2024)

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• The cookbook "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman provides simple recipes you can make quickly.
• The recipe below only takes 10 minutes. All you need is salmon, olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon.
• I made it, and it was an easy, simple recipe with minimal prep and cleanup.

If, like me, you're filled with a mixture of boredom and dread when contemplating anything to do with an oven or stovetop, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to the world's easiest, fastest, (and still delicious) salmon recipe, from Mark Bittman's home cook's beginner bible, "How to Cook Everything." (You can read a full review of the cookbook here.)

I tend to stick to recipes that don't exceed five ingredients, which makes this one perfect: all you need are salmon fillets, olive oil, salt, pepper, and an (optional) lemon.

Mark Bittman's simple salmon recipe:

Ingredients you'll need:

• 2 tablespoons olive or good-quality vegetable oil
• 4 salmon fillets (1 ½ pounds), skinned if you like, pin bones removed
• Salt and pepper
• Lemon or lime wedges for serving

How to cook it:

1. Put a large skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium heat to get hot. Add the oil and swirl to coat the pan.
2. Sprinkle the fish with salt and pepper. Add the fish, skin side down (even if the skin has been removed), and raise the heat to medium-high.
3. Cook until the fillets release easily, 3 to 5 minutes.
4. Turn the salmon and cook to reach the desired stage of doneness, 2 to 5 minutes more (use a knife to peek inside).
5. If you're going to eat the skin, serve the fillets with that side up. Serve with lemon on the side.

What the recipe looked like each step of the way:

I didn't have a cast-iron pan, but this non-stick skillet worked fine. I turned the burner on medium heat, added two tablespoons of olive oil, and swirled it around to coat the skillet.

I sprinkled the salmon fillet with salt and pepper (the ideal seasoning for amateur cooks and minimalist pantries).

I added the salmon to the pan, skin-side down, and raised the heat to medium-high.

At this point, my closet-sized Brooklyn kitchen got smoky enough to set off the alarm. By the time I got back to the stove from waving a towel in front of it, one of the burners stopped working. (Maybe next time, I'll try an oven recipe.)

Thankfully, after more than five minutes (shown above), the fillets released easily from the pan. I flipped them over, skin-side up this time, and let them cook for another five minutes.

Using the $9 fish spatula that the Insider Reviews' executive editor says is the best tool in her kitchen, I plated them skin-side up.

Troubleshooting: Next time, I could defrost the fillets before cooking or separate them in the pan sooner to evenly disperse the heat. And if I end up with another underdone fillet, I could easily give it a quick toss back into the pan.

How they tasted

This recipe is about simplicity: If all you want is salmon that tastes juicy and nicely cooked through, then this fits the bill.

If you're looking for a more complex taste, you might need to add your own sides (pretty easy) or sauce (even easier!) You could also try a Bittman recipe with a few more steps or ingredients, like his four-spice salmon that uses cloves and cumin. The genius of his cookbook is that it's set up to help you progress: You can start with this basic recipe and move on to more complex dishes as you get more comfortable with cooking.

Cleanup process

I used a non-stick pan, but there was still some sizable oil splatter. To finish cleanup, I tossed the skin into the trash and let the pan soak for a few hours. After that, it took a few minutes of scrubbing with a sponge to get it back to its previous clean.

The bottom line

Look no further for the world's easiest, hardest-to-mess-up salmon recipe. It's not going to win you a cooking competition, but it makes weekly meal prep and learning how to cook much more bearable.

Find a review of the How to Cook Everything cookbook by Mark Bittman here.