Reconnecting with My Heritage through Gravlax, a Nordic Salt-Cured Salmon

Cultural connections can be fragile. If you’re lucky, language, traditions, stories, and other homeland ties have been passed down through your family. But for many, few of these links remain. As a third-generation American with Scandinavian roots, I don’t speak Norwegian or read Danish. My relationship with these cultures mostly exists in the traditional recipes that my family has handed down for generations.

For instance, my sister still makes æbleskiver (popover-like pastries) for her kids in our grandfather’s pan. Our grandmother serves holiday dinners off china that was part of a 108-piece set used by her ancestors in Norway. Family recipes like gløgg (hot spiced wine) and berlinerkranser (butter cookies) continue to appear for special occasions. But many other ties were broken, often purposefully, after my great-grandfather left Norway in the 1880s and started his “American family.” This story of cultural assimilation is a common one, but there are ways to counteract it. 

I’ve resisted some of this assimilation by tracking down recipes that, by thin threads, stitch together a forgotten cultural history. When I began to write my first cookbook, The Complete Guide to Pickling, I was eager to include a recipe for gravlax (salt-cured salmon). As a Pacific Northwest kid, salmon was a staple in our household, and dill grew with gusto in my parents’ garden. If my ancestors had immigrated to America in a more recent generation, my grandmother would have taught me to make gravlax, just as she showed me how to make the crust for apple pie.

Gravlax has become one of my favorite appetizers. I often serve it with sourdough rye bread, a flavorful cheese like gjetost (a Norwegian goat cheese) or fromage blanc, homemade mustard, and quick pickles. Like pie crust, it’s surprisingly simple and easy to make once you learn the basic technique.

The basic ingredients

Gravlax requires just a few ingredients: fish, salt, sugar, pepper, and dill. The salt pulls water from the fish’s tissues and dissolves in that liquid to form a brine. The dill and pepper add depth and flavor, with their bitter edges softened by the sugar.

Fresh dill is best for this recipe. It grows like a weed in my garden in summer (which is why some people call the fronds “dill weed”). The rest of the year, I look for it with other fresh herbs in the produce section. Go with freshly-ground black pepper, too: it has complex flavors and anti-inflammatory and other health benefits that diminish as it oxidizes. I prefer raw cane sugar for its neutral flavor, and flaky Kosher salt because it quickly creates brine.

Choosing the fish

Fish quality matters with the salt-cured process used for gravlax, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the most expensive fish in the market. Wild-caught sockeye or coho is generally the best choice, but farmed organic salmon from a trusted source can work, too.

If you’re catching and preserving wild salmon like my Norwegian ancestors did, by all means cure it (with current safety standards in mind). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends blast-freezing fish that will be eaten raw or brined, or storing it at or below −4°F for at least a week. Otherwise, commercially frozen salmon should be your top choice. This fish goes straight from the ocean to blast freezers, killing off the anisakid nematodes found in most wild fish species today, along with other parasites.

Putting it together

To make gravlax, you simply create a salmon “sandwich,” with the dill and salt as the filling between two layers of salmon, skin side facing out. Wrap this like a takeout sandwich to keep everything in place until it’s ready to eat.

Once it’s wrapped up, let the salt do its work, drawing out the salmon’s juices to create a brine. The key, as with most salt-brined foods, is to ensure the fish stays in the brine. I find it easiest to bag the wrapped fish and weigh it down, flipping occasionally to help the juices release and spread. I prefer cheesecloth to plastic for the interior wrapping. The cloth stretches enough that you can tighten it against the fish as you wrap, and it’s porous enough that the juices move around the fish as you flip its bag.

Julie Laing has been blogging about eating well year-round at Twice As Tasty for more than five years. She published her first cookbook, “The Complete Guide to Pickling,” in 2020.