Salmon Alfredo Pasta Recipe
One of the things that I absolutely love about cooking is that it never has to be crazy precise. You can add more of one ingredient, less of another, and still come out with a really good dish when you’re finished. This recipe in particular is one of my favorites. In general, pasta is my favorite food and I love salmon too so to mix the two together is divine!
What do you need for the salmon alfredo pasta?
Ingredients:
Salmon (wild caught is best, I know it’s more expensive but your body will thank you immensely if it’s wild caught)
Avocado Oil
Pasta of your choice (I used rotini in this recipe but I’ve also used farfalle, cellentani, fusilli)
Butter
Olive Oil
Garlic
Red Onion or Sweet Onion (your preference on what taste you like better)
Heavy Cream
Parmesan Cheese (buying a fresh parmesan wedge and grating it yourself is better, but pre shredded works just as well!)
Seasonings of your choice (I use Himalayan pink salt, lemon pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, rosemary)
Step 1: Preheat your oven to 350° and start a pot of water to boil for the pasta.
Step 2: Prepare your salmon ~ take the wild caught salmon and put it on a pan lined with aluminum foil (or if you have a nonstick pan and know your salmon won’t stick to the pan, that’s even better.)
Step 3: Take a tablespoon or so of avocado oil and coat the salmon; avocado oil has a high smoke point and I prefer to use this oil when I cook my meats and fish, but use whatever oil you like (olive oil, grape seed oil, coconut oil, etc.) Then season your salmon with your preferred seasonings (Here I used salt, pepper, cajun seasoning, smoke paprika, garlic paste, rosemary, and fresh lemon slices.)
*Tip: it’s best to let your salmon marinate in your goodness of seasonings for a few hours or overnight, but I’m impatient so I let the seasonings marinate on the salmon as I wait for the oven to heat up! It was still so good regardless :)
Step 4: Heat a pan using medium heat to begin the Alfredo sauce. Put in a tablespoon of butter and a little bit of olive oil.
Step 5: Once the butter and olive oil are heated up and married together, add in the garlic and your onion of choice. Cook both of the ingredients together until the onions start to become transparent and both the onions and garlic are fragrant.
Step 6: Once the garlic and onions are fragrant, add in the heavy cream ~ usually a little more than half a cup is enough for one serving size but if you’re making two meals, add in 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream. Whisk in the heavy cream with the ingredients in the pan. Keep the pan at medium heat and let the heavy cream, garlic, and onions cook together.
Step 7: Assuming the pot of water is boiling at this point, heavily salt your water. (I’m serious about this step for when I make pasta: you do NOT have to put olive oil in it, but you should add a lot of salt. Olive oil does not help to unstick the pasta noodles from each other. That is the job of the amount of salt you put in the water, so salt that water up well!) Then add your pasta and set a timer for the pasta depending on which one you use. Stir the pasta as it cooks until the timer runs out.
Step 8: At this point the oven should also be done preheating and you’re ready to put the salmon in there. The time needed to cook the salmon will depend on the thickness of the filet you have. For thin filets it might take 12- 15 minutes and for thicker filets it might take 20-25 minutes. (The filets I usually buy from Trader Joes are a little bit on the thinner side and I’ve found 13 minutes is the sweet spot when I make my salmon to just how I like it!)
Step 9: Go back to your Alfredo sauce~ if you see that it’s bubbling up that’s a great sign! Continue whisking and letting the sauce come to a boil. Then, turn down the heat to low or simmer and keep whisking the sauce. The sauce is going to thicken up over the course of a few minutes while whisking occasionally ~ whisk, let the sauce sit and thicken up, whisk, let the sauce sit and thicken up…
Step 10: Once the sauce is at that thick sauce consistency (take a spoon, dip the backside of it in the sauce, and slide your finger down the back. If there is a clear line of the where the metal spoon is, you know it’s at the right consistency. The sauce should not be loose at all!), take off the heat and season your sauce with your preferred seasonings. Then, again with the heat off, add in your freshly or pre- shredded parmesan cheese. Whisk in a little cheese at a time to let the cheese melt into the sauce. Finally, I like to add fresh lemon juice to the sauce because I love citrus and the acidity it brings, but you don’t have to do this if you don’t like lemon all that much!
Step 11: The pasta should be done by this point, so drain the pasta and then add it directly into the alfredo sauce (before I fully drain the pasta, I take out about a 1/2 cup of the pasta water and put it to the side and then after I add in the pasta to the sauce, I add in the pasta water with it. Pasta water helps to thicken up the sauce even more and helps the sauce coat the pasta noodles even better!) Then, turn the pan back on veryyy low heat and mix the sauce and pasta together!
Step 12: Once the salmon is done if it wasn’t out of the oven already, plate up the salmon. Then add in the pasta and I like to pour the sauce over the salmon too so the salmon gets the flavor from the pasta sauce too. Add another fresh squeeze of lemon juice, crushed red pepper flakes, and some parsley either fresh or dried (fresh is better) and you are ready to enjoy!