Miso Buttered Pasta and Salmon

Miso Buttered Noodles with Mushrooms, Carrots, and Sugar and Spice Salmon

Pasta tossed in a silky miso butter sauce, with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, bitter greens, and miso roasted carrots, then topped with flaky sugar and spice coated salmon. This elegant, umami rich dish tastes like something you’d expect from a fine dining restaurant, but comes together in about 35 minutes.

I, along with most of the rest of the world, am kind of obsessed with miso. Using miso in a dish feels like cheating because its salty, funky, umami rich flavor somehow manages to increase the depth and complexity to a massively disproportionate degree. It’s like a secret weapon (even though it’s used all over the world and not really a secret).

Your sauce is tasting a bit flat? Add some miso.

You’re feeling lazy but still want a home cooked meal? Coat anything – meat, poultry, veggies – with some miso and butter, roast and you’re done.

Your soup tastes a bit lackluster? Stir in a couple spoonfuls of miso.

You know you should eat a salad but really want to eat a burger? Whisk some miso into the dressing. (Ok. It won’t be the same. But it’ll getcha at least halfway there.)

What is miso?

Originating in Japan hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years ago. Miso is simply a fermented paste made with soybeans and koji – a kind of mold cultivated from rice, barley, or soybeans. Most of the miso available here in the US uses koji made with rice, but if you search, you can find miso that’s been made with barley or from 100% soybeans. You can even find miso-like concoctions made from beans and grains other than soy, such as farro, chickpeas, and lima beans.

As is the case with most fermented foods, miso takes weeks – even months or years – to make. As it ferments, microorganisms break down the soybeans, forming a variety of amino acids, simple sugars, and fatty acids.

Translation: Fermentation creates layers, and layers, and layers of salty, earthy, complex flavor.

An even better translation: Miso is magical.

Wanna know what else is magical? Oven-ready cedar planked salmon fillets.

Cedar Bay Grilling Company’s Sugar and Spice Cedar Planked Salmon is available in most major supermarkets, and requires little more than removing the packaging, sprinkling with salt (if you like), and popping it in the oven (or on the grill).

In this recipe, the salmon is cooked right on it’s cedar plank alongside miso coated carrots, both roasting at the same temperature, while you make the pasta. Having already seasoned, oven-ready salmon is what makes it possible to cook this dish in about 35 minutes. 🙌

Also, the slightly sweet sugar and spice coating on the salmon is a perfect compliment to the salty, earthy flavors of miso, caramelized shiitake mushrooms, and bitter greens.

More Delicious Pasta Recipes:

• 20-minute Garlic and Chipotle Pasta with Chicken
• Slow Cooker Short Rib Pasta
• Vegetarian Spaghetti Carbonara 
• Spaghetti Puttanesca 

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