The Protein Drop #6: Most of the glaze goes on after the oven

Baking salmon is the easy part. What people get wrong is the sauce, and they get it wrong by using all of it at once.

Split the glaze

The glaze is soy sauce, mirin, honey, rice vinegar, ginger and garlic, simmered for two minutes and thickened with a teaspoon of cornstarch until it coats a spoon. Brush a third of it over the fillets and bake at 200°C (400°F) for twelve to fourteen minutes, until the salmon flakes. That third caramelizes onto the fish and is the part that tastes roasted.

The other two thirds never see the oven. They go over the salmon in the container, after the rice, broccoli and edamame are packed, and they are what still tastes of ginger and vinegar on Wednesday, because nothing has cooked it down. Sesame seeds and sliced spring onions last.

The teriyaki salmon and edamame rice bowls are 44g of protein at 675 calories a bowl, and they keep three days in the fridge.

The prep note: stop at just-flaking

Salmon is forgiving in the oven and unforgiving in the microwave. Pull it at the point where it flakes under light pressure and no further, because it finishes cooking on Wednesday when you reheat it, and a fillet that was already firm on Sunday comes out dry. The vegetables follow the same rule: four minutes for the broccoli, the edamame added for the last two, then drained properly so no water ends up in the box.

The habit to take from this issue is to undercook, by a little, anything that gets reheated, and to keep the sauce that carries the flavor away from the heat. Both cost nothing, and together they are the difference between four boxes you look forward to and three you get through.

Add it to your week

Every card at the bottom of this issue carries a calendar button. Tap it and the dish lands in your week, which pools everything you have added into one shopping list. Add all three from this issue and the list writes itself.

Something new to cook this week

Seared steak with garlic kale and white beans is 57g of protein and 530 calories a serving, done in twenty-five minutes and never leaving one pan. Sear the steak, move it to a board to rest, and let the sliced garlic, kale and cannellini beans cook in what it left behind. Lemon juice at the end does more for it than any extra salt.

A snack to keep the protein coming

Dark chocolate coconut protein bars need twenty minutes of work and no oven. Press the coconut, protein powder, Greek yogurt and honey into a slab, freeze it for half an hour, cut ten bars and dip them in melted dark chocolate. 8g of protein at 165 calories each, five days in the fridge or a month in the freezer.

New in the bank this week

Recipes go live on a schedule, a few every week, so the bank is not the same on Saturday as it was on Monday. Everything published in the last seven days is collected on the new recipes page, meals and drinks together, with the newest first. This week that includes chicken banh mi meal prep bowls, 42g of protein at 505 calories, with the pickles and the sriracha yogurt packed on the side so day four still has crunch.

Undercook the fish, hold back the sauce, and the box you open on Wednesday is the one you packed. Back next Saturday.