Salmon with Garlic Cream Sauce
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Perfectly pan-seared salmon served with the most irresistible garlicky cream sauce with sneaked in spinach!
Featured Comment
Garlicky cream sauce. Sneaked-in greens. Soft, juicy, tender salmon fillets. What’s NOT to love?
WHY MAKE SALMON AT HOME?
- Quick, easy and impressive. Salmon cooks together very quickly. It makes for a great weeknight hero, and is also impressive enough to serve to guests.
- Budget-friendly. Frozen salmon is typically much more budget-friendly than fresh salmon. And although there is some misconception that fresh is better than frozen, fresh salmon is frozen at its peak, sealing in all the nutritional quality as freshly caught fish.
- Omega-3s. Salmon is a nutritional powerhouse! Thank you omega-3 fatty acids.
- Versatility. You have so many options here – you can grill the salmon, pan sear the salmon, smoke the salmon, poach the salmon, etc.. It’s basically your own adventure here!
The salmon fillets comes out perfectly seared and golden brown (highly recommend using a nonstick skillet here), complemented by the most velvety cream sauce of your dreams.
Not a fan of spinach? Kale would be a great leafy green substitute. Don’t want to use wine? Additional chicken stock can be used instead. This recipe is very forgiving yet so so impressive.
WHAT TO SERVE WITH SALMON
Tools For This Recipe
Large cast iron skillet
Salmon with Garlic Cream Sauce: Frequently Asked Questions
Salmon can take about 12-24 hours to defrost in the refrigerator. For a quick defrost (about 1 hour), you can place the salmon in a resealable leak-proof bag, submerged in a bowl of cold water, changing out the water every 30 minutes.
Additional chicken stock can be used for white wine as a non-alcoholic substitute.
Half and half is equal parts of whole milk and cream. For 1 cup half and half, you can substitute 3/4 cup whole milk + 1/4 cup heavy cream or 2/3 cup skim or low-fat milk + 1/3 cup heavy cream.
Kale, cabbage, swiss chard and collard greens are all great subs.
Salmon with Garlic Cream Sauce
Ingredients
- 4 (6-ounce) salmon fillets
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 ½ tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 medium shallot, diced
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup dry white wine*
- ¾ cup chicken stock
- ¾ cup half and half*
- 3 cups baby spinach
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
- 1 lemon, cut in wedges
Instructions
- Using paper towels, pat both sides of the salmon fillets dry; season with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
- Melt butter in a large cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add salmon fillets to the skillet, skin side up, and cook until golden brown and a crust has formed, about 4-5 minutes. Using a fish turner, flip, and cook for an additional 4-5 minutes, or until desired doneness. Remove and keep warm.
- Reduce heat to low; add garlic and shallots, and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 2 minutes.
- Whisk in flour until lightly browned, about 1 minute.
- Stir in wine, scraping any browned bits from the bottom of the skillet.
- Stir in chicken stock and half and half until slightly thickened, about 2-3 minutes; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Stir in spinach until wilted, about 1-2 minutes. Return salmon to the skillet; sprinkle with dill.
- Serve immediately with lemon wedges.
Notes
Did you make this recipe?
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Absolutely delicious alot of extra sauce. Can you freeze?
My family loves salmon & I’m always looking for simple delicious recipes to make with it. This one did not disappoint! I love how quick it was to make. The cream sauce was Damn Delicious & my family could not get enough of it! Thanks for this, its a keeper.
Love anything Damn Delicious !!
One bag of fresh spinach is 10 oz. Do I need to get 3 cups = 24 oz. (almost 2 1/2 bags) for this recipe?
I wondered about the spinach amount, too. The internet says 1 cup = 1 oz., which doesn’t seem like very much at all. Will try tonight.
Yup. 1 cup = 1 oz. Good amount for the recipe, though I took another poster’s advice and upped the sauce.
And yes, it was damn delicious.
All I can say is this is absolutely DAMN DELICIOUS! Great recipe-the whole family loved it! Thank you for giving me a way to sneak in spinach!
I’ve made this recipe three times now. The first time I forgot to remove the salmon from the pot – it turned out amazing. The salmon became really soft and fluffy, like a cloud, and was infused with flavor from the broth. The second time I followed the recipe properly, and I found it was less tasty, so the third time I returned to leaving the salmon in and it was great.
I highly recommend not removing the salmon on step 2. It elevates this recipe from “good” to “that’s the best salmon I’ve ever had in my life”.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing that, Colin! My only concern is keeping the skin crisp. Any thoughts on that?
Hi Susan, I just made this recipe again tonight. I think if you half the recipe quantities and use a large enough pan you can keep the top of the salmon exposed. I half the recipe and use a moderate sized pan and I still manage to keep the top of my salmon fairly crisp. It won’t be crisp on all sides, but that’s the sacrifice you make for making the salmon fluffy and juicy. Maybe the tradeoff isn’t worth it for everyone, but I certainly prefer it this way!
This was so good!!!!
I was feeding just myself and my 2 kids so I only used 2 filets. I kept the sauce recipe the same so I think if I were feeding the whole family I would double the sauce as it was too good to just have a little.
I served this on basmati rice. I can’t wait to make this again.
Thanks!!
Tasha
This is one of my favorites from this website. It is very easy , so good,
What a great creative way to cook salmon instead of the usual roasting…..I didn’t add cream but vino,butter,broth and some flour make an incredible sauce……Salude!!!!
Yum! This sauce was amazing! I made 3 substitutions out of necessity. I made a cashew cream (1/3 cup quick soaked cashews + roughly 1/2 cup water well blended) to substitute for half and half. Used Veggie Better than Bouillon for chicken stock + wine. Lastly, I garnished with capers instead of dill.
EXCELENTE RECETA……. LA HICE ME QUEDO SUPER BUENA …..DESDE ARGENTINA ..ABRAZO SU…
Oh my, even better than I thought it would be!
This is a keeper, thank you
Where I live, fresh salmon is not readily available. I know it would not be near as good but could frozen and thawed salmon filets be substituted? Thank you.
Hi Candice! As long as you thaw the filets first, as you mentioned, that should work just fine. Hope that helps!
Thank you very much.
Candice;
Unless you catch it yourself; there is no such thing as fresh salmon!
All commercial salmon is flash frozen at sea and then delivered to retailers who thaw it out for display.
So you are in business for s delicious recipe.
Warsey
HEB in Texas sells fresh, never frozen salmon as well as other fish like halibut, sole, red snapper…they’ll label the fish as previously frozen if it has been frozen, and fresh, never frozen if it has never been frozen. They get fresh salmon all year long. If it’s wild-caught they will say so, if it’s farmed they also let you know. Wild-caught is seasonal of course. The one we get most often is organic Norwegian salmon, really delicious. Or the Ora King salmon from New Zealand but you have to go Central Market for that. In California we also got fresh salmon; wild-caught was a little more common and a lot cheaper. Where you live may determine whether you can find fresh fish but it would be a surprise if most major markets didn’t carry fresh, never frozen fish. Whole Foods carries fresh salmon, pretty sure.
Fantastic recipe! Thank you!
This was phenomenal!! I only had one six ounce filet on hand because we normally split one but it just meant a bunch of extra sauce. I served it over a bed of jasmine rice which soaked up all that creamy saucy goodness. Absolutely delicious and will become a staple recipe for us.
I made this today it was fabulous my husband loved it. The only thing is I only used two salmon since there is only the two of us, and I tried to cut things in half but the sauce ended up to thin next time I will use less liquids. But we both loved it hubby said that was a keeper.
is there anything that can be used to substitute for half and half. Looking to reduce caloric value of sauce. thank you
Diane, I have used low fat condensed milk instead of heavy cream and/or half and half. Everything comes out nice and creamy for a lot less calories and fat.
Fabulous salmon dish. Love it!
Wow! This was amazing! I will dream about this one. Can’t wait to make it again! Thanks for sharing this.
What do u mean when the recipe say half and half in the salmon recipe
Hi, it is a mix between milk and heavy cream.