A Delicious Twist on a Classic: Poached Salmon Salad Niçoise

Salad Niçoise is a popular salad that originated in Nice in the south of France designed to take advantage of the abundance of tuna that is fished in the Mediterranean. Combined with steamed potatoes, green beans, hard boiled eggs and Niçoise olives it makes a flavor packed meal. Even though the traditional recipe uses tuna this salad also adapts easily to different interpretations.

Salmon Salad Niçoise

This recipe uses poached fresh salmon instead of canned tuna, and the preparation of the meal is greatly simplified by using the steam oven. Instead of individual saucepans to cook each component the salmon, potatoes, eggs and green beans are all steamed simultaneously in the steam oven.

The potatoes, eggs and green beans can all be steamed in the large perforated oven pan while the salmon is steamed in a small solid oven pan. If your oven doesn’t have a small stainless pan any oven safe container will work.

Steaming & Poaching Ideal Cooking Techniques for Superior Flavor and Texture

Foods cooked in steam have noticeably better flavor, texture and nutrient value and even though we are using the Steam mode to prepare this meal the vegetables and eggs are actually being cooked by a different method to the salmon. The vegetables and eggs are cooked in the perforated pan allowing the steam to circulate around them and cook them through. This technique is similar to placing a perforated pan over boiling water and covering the pan with a lid.

The benefit of steaming in a steam oven is that the oven maintains a consistent temperature throughout the steaming process and foods can be easily added or removed depending on the individual cooking time.

The salmon is also cooked in the Steam mode however in this case the steam is used to gently poach the fish. The fish is poached in a solid pan with a little water, lemon slices and seasoning which add flavor to the fish as it poaches gently in the steam. This technique is similar to placing the fish on a perforated tray in a fish poacher and covering it with a lid. A gentle consistent temperature is key to successfully poaching fish so again the steam oven provides the ideal environment.

Steamed potatoes

Potatoes, Eggs and Salmon

Steamed salmon

How to Use a Steam Oven for Easy Meal Preparation

This recipe perfectly illustrates how easy it is to cook multiple foods at one time in a steam oven instead of using a separate saucepan to cook each one. Success when cooking multiple foods at one time begins with planning. Basically once you calculate the cooking time for the items that take the longest you can add the other items towards the end of the cooking time or cook them once the longer cooking items are removed from the oven.

In this recipe the potatoes and eggs cook within the same time frame, but the potatoes need to cool prior to being combined with the dressing; and other ingredients and the eggs need to sit in cold water for at least 5 minutes before the shells can be removed. The green beans will take approximately 6 minutes to steam and the salmon depending on the thickness will take approximately 10 minutes.

Ingredients for the salad

What makes this process easy is the fact that no temperature adjustment is required, once the steam oven is set to the steam mode all you have to do is add the food and set the timer. An added benefit to cooking in the steam oven is that the stainless steel cooking containers require minimal clean-up and are easily washed by hand or in the dishwasher.

If you are looking for a delicious dessert that uses a bounty of summer fruits and can easily be cooked as part of a Convection meal, then check out my next post. The benefit of learning how to make effective use of your convection and steam ovens is that meal preparation becomes easier and cooking results improve as you take advantage of the features of these ovens.

Larissa, Your Convection Enthusiast