This Mirin Glazed and Roasted Salmon Recipe is a fresh healthy salmon dinner using Asian flavors. Garnished with blistered petite heirloom tomatoes, this is a quick, easy and an exceptional culinary treat.
What Is Mirin Cooking Wine?
Have you ever cooked with Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine? If you haven’t you’re missing out.
It’s a staple ingredient in many Japanese dishes, from Teriyaki to Ramens.
The label also tells me it’s used for making sushi rice, great for adding to dipping sauces, or sprinkling over grilled fish. It’s similar to Sake, but has more sugar and lower alcohol content.
It’s a subtly sweet, slightly tangy Japanese rice wine.
My recent search for Mirin in its pure form left me empty handed. Five liquor stores later and I was still empty handed. Heading to my local grocer, I found a couple of bottles labeled “aji-mirin” which translates to “tastes like mirin”.
The label tells me added sweeteners were involved,. corn syrup to be exact. That’s fine – It’ll still do the trick. If you can’t find Mirin you can, sub in a dry sherry or a sweet marsala wine.
Dry white wine or rice vinegar will also do, though you’ll need to counteract the sourness with about a ½ teaspoon of sugar for every tablespoon you use.
A couple weeks ago, I sprinkled Mirin over fresh green beans that had simply been salt and peppered and were cooking on my stove top in butter. Mirin seemed to add a mysterious rich flavor, Unami as I learned in Culinary School, And so my “sticky beans” were born. Delicious and simple.
Let’s Make Glazed Salmon
For this week’s Salmon Saturday, I defrosted two wild caught sockeye salmon fillets from my freezer stash. Then stirred together equal parts of Mirin, soy sauce and light brown sugar to cook my salmon filets. ⅛ cup each for two salmon filets.
Whisking the ingredients in a small bowl to combine well, I simmered the sauce stove top to thicken and then transferred the sauce to a shallow bowl, and placed the filets, flesh side down, in the sauce for about ten minutes.
Transferring the fillets to a parchment paper lined sheet pan, the fillets were roasted for 20 minutes with a healthy basting of the Mirin mixture every five minutes.
About 10 minutes into the roasting time, I added heirloom petite tomatoes to cook just until they were blistered.
Simply side the salmon with your favorite green veggie and serve over rice. I drizzled the glaze over the salmon and the rice…it was delicious…especially the rice. I sprinkled some fresh snipped chives from my garden and we enjoyed a nice dinner all in about thirty minutes.
Mirin Glazed Roasted Salmon Recipe
I hope you give this roasted salmon recipe a try, and if you do, please come back and give the recipe a star rating. And leave a comment about your experience with the recipe. I truly love hearing from my readers.
And if you have a favorite glazed salmon recipe, let me know, I’d love to give it a try.
More Roasted Salmon Recipes:
Looking for more sensational seafood recipes? Don’t miss my Main Dishes, Seafood category. And you’ll want to pay close attention to my Heavenly Halibut Recipe … it’s the most popular.
Mirin Glazed Salmon Fillet Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 Salmon Fillets
- ⅛ cup soy sauce
- ⅛ cup Aji Mirin Sweet Cooking Wine
- ⅛ cup light brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Place salmon fillets on a small sheet pan lined with parchment paper for easy cleanup.
- Lightly salt the salmon.
- In a small sauce pan, mix together the soy sauce, Mirin Cooking Wine and Brown Sugar. Cook this mixture over medium heat until starting to thicken. About 10 minutes.
- Baste the salmon with the sauce mixture.
- Place salmon fillets on the middle rack of the oven.
- Cook 20 minutes, basing with sauce every 5 minutes.
- Serve over rice and drizzle with some of the remaining glaze.
Nutrition
Mirin Glazed Salmon … It’s What’s For Dinner
Why Trust These Recipes? Lea Ann Brown has lived, worked and played in Colorado for 45 years. She has immersed herself in the Colorado Culinary space, is a Culinary School Graduate and publishes her Colorado food Blog, Cooking On The Ranch.
It is not possible to purchase HON MIRIN in the US supermarkets because it is considered 14% alcohol. At best, can buy aji mirin .For those interested in the real stuff, I was able to purchase from Japan Store, not just Hon Mirin but 4 year old aged mirin ( Issi Souden) , specially made by Ogasawara. Because it is aged for 4 years, it is low glycemic and it is quite smooth, can be drunk as liquor. It is only made from 3 ingredients, glutinous rice, rice koji, shochu. Bec it is aged 4. years, t here is 45% mirin left and is quite sweet so very small amount is needed . I was worried about it being shipped in this difficult time of covid but it arrived from Japan thru, Fed Ex with tracking, in 4 days. Based on exchange rate, one bottle cost $12.00. Two bottles with Fed Ex came to $50.00. Japan Store is very user friendly, keeping me posted during its travel time!
One of my favorite recipe is seared halibut or chilean sea bass with ginger, garlic , and then when fish is browned with crispy skin, removed to the side, added sauce that is made of miso , soy, rice vinegar, small amount of mirin and a good quality sesame oil, spring onions to the oil( with chilean sea bass, I remove rendered oil as it cooks( , then 1/4 cup to 1.2 cup of Dashi stock, let it simmer, return the fish to pan , let stock reduce and then served with rice.
I also like it with steamed fluke, same ingredients in the steamer at the same time.
I never marinade as it comes out perfectly seasoned. let the fish shine! .Sorry I am not including amount of ingredient as I do nto cook that way. I just eyeball it.
https://thejapanstore.jp/products/sake_008?variant=13212790194241
This Mirin glazed salmon was delicious. I put the fish under the broiler for the last five minutes to get a little charred. My husband said he wanted me to make it again. Thank you for this delicious dish.
Hi Vera!
I’m so glad you liked the recipe and doubly glad your husband approved.
I so much appreciate you letting me know. Notes like yours make my efforts so rewarding.
Thanks so much for your note Vera.
I love mirin and use it pretty frequently in my stir fry sauce. Great stuff and I can certainly see using it with salmon. Nice idea!
I’m a new mirin fan. You’ll have to give me some ideas.
Beautiful! I love rice wine vinegar, but have never cooked with Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine – must change this. 🙂
I loving using Mirin… this sounds like the perfect way to use it too!!
What a beautiful piece of fish!
What a beautiful color!
I recently bought a bottle of Mirin. I was going to make a recipe with it…I just haven’t done it yet!
This salmon looks wonderful. The color is great. I bet it tastes amazing. I’ve pinned this!
I really like the deep rich color of the salmon. I think we may have a bottle of mirin with a little missing sitting around somewhere.
I think I have a bottle of Mirin somewhere in my cupboard. What a pretty glaze on the salmon Lea Ann.
Sam
I think we’ve just witnessed the inventions of two new recipes! I love it when that happens. The salmon looks succulent!
This sounds delicious, Lea Ann. Next time I prepare salmon I will do it your way. I have a bottle of Mirin in my cupboard as well. I wanted to buy salmon this morning at Costco but all that was left were huge packages of it, way too much for me, so I’ll go back on Monday to see if there are some more my size. That is the best salmon.