This 3-Ingredient Salmon Dish Uses a Surprising Retro Ingredient

Salmon is one of the most popular types of seafood in the United States, and for good reason: It doesn’t take long to cook, is relatively affordable, and, when cooked properly, can take on a ton of flavor. Whether you prefer baking salmon in the oven, grilling salmon, making crispy salmon in the air fryer, or simply cooking salmon on the stovetop, all you need for flavorful salmon is a couple of simple ingredients.

The late cookbook author, chef, and TV host James Barber demonstrates this perfectly in an old video posted to TikTok by user ChefSully_. You can watch the full clip from Barber’s Canadian cooking show, The Urban Peasant, on YouTube. In the video, Barber uses one interesting ingredient to add flavor when sautéing salmon steaks: frozen orange juice concentrate. He simply cooks two salmon steaks in a tablespoon of butter, then adds a tablespoon of orange juice concentrate and lets it melt. The butter and orange juice combine to make a sweet sauce.

It’s important to note the differences between actual orange and fruit juice and frozen juice concentrate. To make frozen juice concentrate, much of the water from fruit juice is extracted. What’s left behind are the solids of the fruit juice and a lot of sugar. Because the frozen orange juice concentrate is already very sweet, you need just a small amount of the concentrate for a flavor boost. And because the concentrate has a good amount of sugar in it, it will help to add some caramelization to the salmon. The dish looks absolutely delicious and we can’t wait to try it.