Himalayan Salt Cooking Stone ~

My youngest son gave me this very pretty Himalayan Salt Cooking Stone as part of my birthday present.  I had seen them before, but never used one.  And I didn't really know how to use them, but that never stopped me before.  So, I decided that baking salmon on it would be a great first try.  My stone is about the size of a brick and it's pretty heavy.  It's great for one, perhaps two pieces of salmon.  But, if I wanted to do more than that one would need either two stones, or a larger one.  Just remember, the larger they are, the heavier they are.  Which isn't a bad thing, it's just removing them from the oven might be.  They are extremely hot and very heavy.

Here is a picture of the salmon after it baked for 10 minutes at 400 degree farenheit.  I was nervous about putting it down somewhere, so I placed on an upside half sheet pan.  Can you see how juicy it is though?  Make sure you use heavy duty oven mitts to take the stone out of the oven.  It's extremely hot and stays that way for awhile.  So remove your protein from the stone immediately or it will continue to cook.

My salmon piece was an average size and I put lots of black pepper on it and let it sit.  What's really important about the stone is making sure it's really hot, sort of like a pizza stone.  So I put mine in the oven while I was roasting my vegetables for dinner.  Oh, the directions say to either put a drip pan underneath, or a piece of aluminum foil.  However, nothing dripped from mine, but I can see how it could.  I let the stone bake on it's own for 1/2 hour before I placed my salmon on it.

I had roasted yukon gold potatoes, and fennel together and made asparagus as well.  It made for a delightful dinner.  Everything was really yummy.  But the main thing was how wonderful and juicy my salmon was, without any butter or oil.  Can you see how lovely it looks?

If you haven't roasted fennel and yukon gold potatoes together, you are missing out.  Just chunk them up, toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and place in a baking dish for about 1/2 hour, at 425 F.  Halfway through, I turn everything over. 

Now, this dinner met all of my requirements, easy, delicious and low fat. 

Enjoy ~