Omg this was the best recipe! Used a 1.1 lb piece of ( farm raised) salmon from local reliable market and cured for 2 days. Sliced up on a fresh bagel with cream cheese capers and a tomato from my garden ! The best ever! May have to make some sushi rolls too. Thanks!

Hi,
Is this the longest ongoing chat about Gravadlax?
I have used your recipe for a year or so and it always produces great gravadlax. I have added a grated beetroot to the sugar - salt - dill - lime - vodka mix. This adds nothing to the flavour but adds a great red colour to the surface of the salmon. When you slice it you get a great red edge slowly fading to a deep red orange colour gravadlax. It looks fantastic and gets great comments.
Also simplifying the technique still more - no sandwich of salmon, just put the mixture on the flesh side of the filet. Do not chop the dill, put it on unchopped, it's much easier to remove before slicing. No weight on top, just turn over every 12 hours. Make sure it's wrapped in plenty of clingfilm.
It will produce fantastic gravadlax.

You make mention of fructose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose in your recipe, but you specify table sugar, which is sucrose, quite a different animal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose. Fructose is a monosaccharide derived directly from fruit, and although it can be used as a sweetener and is perceived (wrongly) to be more healthy than sucrose, it often causes diarrhea. Sucrose, on the other hand, derived directly from sugar cane, is a disaccharide composed of a glucose and a fructose. Glucose is the fuel upon which our bodies run. The glucose is split off from the fructose by means of an enzyme, making its absorption actually slower than fructose alone, so it generally does not cause the diarrhea that fructose does.

The white stuff you buy in the sacks labeled "sugar" is sucrose, and so is Sucanat, dried sugar cane juice, Demarara sugar, brown sugar, molasses, and any of the "less refined" sugars you will see on the shelves.

Great thread. Make this all of the time. Just a few more options:

- Turbinado sugar ("sugar in the raw")works great instead of white. It's not as cloying as straight brown sugar, but still has some of the same light caramel notes

- No zester for lime? Just use a standard vegetable peeler and chop the resulting shavings

- Also has good luck using some whole coriander for the same citrus'y flavor

This is my first attempt at making gravlax. I didn't find this site until after I started the process. All I could find was a farmed raised skinless fillet, 3 1/2 lbs. I used a 50 / 50 sea salt to sugar ratio, splash of vodka and wrapped in plastic and weighted the works down flipped every 10-12 hours. No dill for me, thank you very much. My fillet weighed 3.5 lbs and the recipe I used called for a LOT of sugar / salt. I used over a cup. I drained off the "syrup" every 3 or 4 hours. I tasted after 24 hours (about a hour ago) and am not impressed. It tastes a bit fishy and of course it's not nearly done yet and there is a bit of crust on some areas from burning.I evenly added some brown sugar, about 1/3 cup, and stuck the works in a zip lock gallon bag to let it soak in the "syrup". I'll drain it off in the morning, taste again and continue to flip and cure for a max of 72 hours. The hard texture doesn't bother me but the fishy taste does. Will this taste go away after it's done? The fish was very fresh and did not and still does not have any fishy smell, just taste.

I take it a bit further by adding caraway seed to the salt/sugar mix and a couple ounces of peaty scotch to brew in!

My gravlax is done and I couldn't resit having some before I stuck it in the freezer to kill any possible parasites and / or their eggs that may be lurking within. Since it was farm raised it's probably OK anyway. It came out FANTASTIC despite using a process from another site. I put it on a thin piece of toasted French bread with cream cheese. As good as it tasted I will use the process from this site the next time. Using my razor sharp fillet knife I sliced it so thin that I could almost read through it. It was skinless so I laid it on a double thickness paper towel and it held it in place as if it were attached to skin. That made it very easy to slice. I did have to pick off a few slivers of paper towel but it was no big deal.

I forgot to mention that I used smoked sea salt for my gravlax. I made it myself on my gas grill. I used small pieces of maple branches that fell off one of my trees, soaked in water for a couple hours, wrapped in foil with a few holes poked in the top. Just lay the foil pack, holes side up, under the grat and directly on the flames on one side of the grill. Place foil or an old cookie sheet or pie tin onto the grate on the other side of the grill. Lay a thin layer of salt on the foil (tin). DO NOT light the side of the gill the salt is over. Mine smoked for 45 minutes before the chips burned out. The salt was only lightly smoked and could have used more time so I will either use more wood the next time or add a second packet of chips when the first one burns out. I made more salt than I needed so I would have left overs for my next batch of gravlax. It's also good on other food for a subtle smoke flavor.