Many years ago when our family moved to the Pacific Northwest, one of our family’s first weekend trips was to the Washington Coast. This was long before the Twilight saga found light in contemporary society and made Forks, Washington a popular spot on the map.
As we were exploring the area, we found a sweet little seaside Inn that just so happened to have a restaurant. Score! Maybe.
It was in a remote area of Western Washington, and honestly, I was a little hesitant as to what this little Inn might offer in the way of a dinner menu. Well hold the phone and pinch my arm! My taste buds were pleasantly surprised.
Not only did they serve my two gals favorite food which was fried calamari but they also served grilled salmon with a savory strawberry sauce. It was a lovely sweet yet savory sauce that paired so beautifully with the grilled salmon.
After the mini excursion I came home and promtply re-created the sauce. Most fruit sauces are a reduction sauce of some sort and typically require time and attention. However, I wanted a simple sauce that allowed the pure, sweet, delicious taste of strawberries to prevail, while spicing it up with something fun – chipotle chili powder seemed the perfect kick.
The end result is a lovely, fresh and simple sauce that pairs perfectly with salmon. However, I also use this sauce for pork tenderloin, pork loin roast, chicken and duck. This is definitely a sauce to keep handy in the sauce repertoire.
Delicious Wishes and Loads of Love,
Karista
Savory Strawberry Sauce with Grilled Salmon
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 small-medium shallot, finely diced
- 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
- 1 quart fresh strawberries, sliced
- 1 chipotle chile, finely diced or minced
- ¼ - ½ cup white wine
- 2 tablespoons strawberry preserves (a great way to use your summer jam!)
- Squeeze of lemon juice
- Salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste
- Serve with Grilled or Roasted Salmon
Instructions
- In a sauté pan or medium pot over medium heat, add the olive oil. When the oil is hot add the shallots and sauté until wilted.
- Next stir in the ginger, strawberries, chipotle chile, white wine and strawberry preserves. Simmer on low until the strawberries have somewhat emulsified and become saucy.
- Add the squeeze of lemon and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Reblogged this on Karista's Kitchen and commented:
This is one of my earlier recipes that I prepare every summer. Fresh strawberries make the best summer desserts, but they also make the lovliest savory sauces for grilled fish and meat. I tweaked the recipe a bit and updated the pictures. Beautifully delicious!
How do you suggest I season the fish? I’m thinking lemon/pepper but having never made it with this sauce before, I’m not certain.
Thanks! 😀
Yes just a simple salt and pepper is perfect. Enjoy!
Brilliant, thank you. How long would you guess this sauce takes in total? Don’t mean to pester you, I just want Mother’s Day dinner to be as close to perfect as I can get it. 🙂
No worries, I love answering cooking questions! 🙂 I would allow a total of 30 minutes for the sauce. More than likely it won’t take that long but it depends on how much liquid comes from the strawberries. If the strawberries aren’t as sweet as you like, feel free to add an extra tablespoon of preserves. Enjoy!!
The sauce was lovely… even picky eaters liked it on their salmon which ended up seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, and rosemary along with butter. 5 stars! 😀
Savoury strawberry sauce sounds heavenly – now if only strawberries were in season here!
🙂 Mandy
I think you’re about to enter your winter season? I always forget that. You could use some lovely frozen strawberries, thawed and drained. I haven’t tried but I think it would work.
I never would have come up with a savory sauce with strawberries and chipotle. I am soooooo curious to try this. I hear that we have some homegrown strawberries for sale here in Ontario so I am going to find some and try this!
It does sound strange doesn’t it? But when it hits your tongue, wow, the flavors are briliant together and perfectly suited to grilled fish or poultry. I love it with fresh strawberries, but frozen thawed strawberries would probably work too.
This sounds delightful Karista, and somehow the chipotle and the strawberry make great sense to me. I love fruit flavors with spice, and with fish. Years and years ago a local restaurant made mussels cooked in a strawberry, wine and butter sauce…amazing, and a testament to just how versatile they are. I’ll be trying your dish! P.S. love your new header/site look!
Thanks Betsy! I need to get it re-sized a bit smaller so the entire lemon shows up. 🙂 And I love the idea of mussels in strawberry, wine and butter sauce! Wow! I would love to have that dish for dinner.
Why? Why do we not live closer to one another? I need a companion to ooh and ahh over this dish with me. My husband, he simply won’t eat salmon, but I love it! Oh, and you’ve paired it with strawberries? Seriously? Dinner and dessert? In the same meal?
Okay, so you with the exclamation points, and me with question marks, together we make one grammatically exuberant team. 😉
You’ve left me hungry, Karista. As usual . . .
Xoxo,
~ C
Haha! Dinner and dessert in the same meal… never thought of it quite like that. Fabulous Cara! And if we lived closer I’d be bringing all my test recipe food to your house. As long as it was a success test recipe of course. 🙂
You’re blog and recipes are looking so berry, berry good!!!
Haha!! Well thank you berry much!!
I had a savory and spicy strawberry sauce last summer at a nice restaurant. I can’t wait to try your recipe.
Thanks Karen! That’s exactly how this recipe came about, I had sampled savory strawberry sauce in a restaurant. I left the restaurant kicking myself for not asking about the specific ingredients. It was a much richer tasting strawberry sauce and I’m sure a reduction sauce that cooked for hours. I didn’t want to prepare something so fussy so I went with fresh and spicy. I think it worked. My family loves this sauce and uses it over grilled chicken too.
Karista, this is absolutely superb, I have never made a savory sauce from strawberries. i cannot wait to taste this.. c
Thanks C! I hope you like it. It’s a lovely way to use up those spring/summer strawberries. Have a delicious day 🙂
That looks glorious – chili & strawberries!
Thank you! I could eat the sauce with a spoon 🙂
This will be a perfect dish for this weekend and to celebrate the dragon boat races while overlooking the harbor.
Wow, dragon boat races and a views of a harbor! Sounds like so much fun where you live. Hope you’ll be posting some pictures. 🙂
Hi! I just wanted to let you know I made this last evening, with a switch in fruit, it was delicious! I switched out the strawberries for raspberries and used Thai sweet chili sauce. I loved it, athough I think some heat like your recipe would have been even better. I’ll try it out with strawberries next time. 🙂
Oh yay! Love to hear those lovely stories. Yes, I do love a good bite to my sauces. But I am so in love with Thai sweet chili sauce too! I think I add it to everything. 🙂 Thanks for letting me know!