~ Lox, Gravlax and Smoked Salmon -- Your Choice ~

Lox, gravlax and smoked salmon -- they are all cured salmon products, and, while they look similar, they are all distinctly different.  For lovers of cured salmon, we all have a favorite.  For example, I prefer smoked salmon to lox and prefer lox to gravlax.  There's more.  In my food world, I tend to serve one or the other for breakfast or brunch -- I don't think of it much as a dinner fare.  For lovers of cured salmon, the good news is, they can, for the most part, be used interchangeably in recipes, and, they can be served any time of day for any meal.

Entire books & lots of commentary have been written about all three.  For the average cook, I'll make a long story short:

Lox is associated with breakfast or brunch -- at least for me it is.  Derived from the Yiddish word lax, meaning salmon, lox is taken from the belly of the fish then very-thinly-sliced.  It gets salt-cured about three months and does not undergo any smoking process afterward. 

Gravlax is pretty much the same thing as lox -- it undergoes the salt cure and does not get smoked. That said, gravlax has spices added to the salt cure (usually sugar, salt and dill), then it's prepped with a seasoning that often includes juniper berry, pepper, and aquavit.

Smoked salmon is salt cured and smoked afterward, one of two ways: hot-smoked (at 145º for about 8 hours) and cold-smoked (no higher than 80º for about 15 hours).  Hot-smoked salmon is dryer and smokier, while cold-smoked is moister, less smoky and more similar to lox.

Try my Smoked Salmon & Folded Omelet Bagel Sandwich:

Try my Lox, Caviar & Frambled Egg Breakfast too:

"We are all in this food world together." ~ Melanie Preschutti

(Recipe, Commentary and Photos courtesy of Melanie's Kitchen/Copyright 2022)