How To Dry Salmon Into Jerky (In The Oven)

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Serve salmon like you might never have thought of before…as a snack food. Pieces of fresh salmon fillet marinated in a spicy chili, garlic and gochujang sauce before dehydrating salmon into this delicious fish jerky recipe. No dehydrator necessary! Make this dried salmon snack straight in your oven. Create your own batch of jerky with these simple steps to dehydrating salmon at home.

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Keep salmon in your snack bag? Maybe not. But that’s about to change once you turn it into jerky. You’ll want to keep this nearby for more than just your meals.

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Why make homemade jerky?

Salmon is a good source of high quality protein and healthy omega-3 fatty acids. If fish isn’t your favorite, you may be missing out on it’s health benefits.

So let’s try another way of making it. By dehydrating salmon into jerky.

This will take some time (both to marinate the fish & to cook) but doesn’t require much attention or even a fancy gadget. It can be done in a standard kitchen oven.

Making salmon jerky at home is also more affordable than purchasing it premade, where a 2 ounce package cost $5 to $10+ dollars.

Ingredients

• sesame seeds
• spices – granulated garlic & ginger powder
• toasted sesame oil
• gochujang, a Korean fermented pepper paste.
• chili garlic sauce – adds a spicy garlic flavor. Use less if you want the jerky to be less spicy. You can find it in the ethnic foods aisle of most supermarkets. It’s one of my FAVORITES! I like mixing it into sauces & dressing (vegan parsley pesto | spicy mayo for sushi), cooked in this Hot Honey Sauce or even spread straight onto a sandwich. Due to a shortage of chili peppers this ingredient may not be available. You can make your own or if necessary, leave it out.
• shichimi togarashi (optional) – a Japanese spice blend made from chilli flakes, seaweed and sesame seeds. Use this as a spicy substitute for the chili garlic sauce. It’s available at Costco, online from OCEANS HALO and also Natierra or you can make it yourself. Red pepper flakes could also be used here.
• soy sauce – this recipe was made with a low sodium one
• maple syrup – balances the other spicy flavors in the sauce
• salmon – it can be a large fillet or individual pieces. If possible, purchase skinless. Otherwise you’ll have to remove the skin yourself.

How to prepare salmon jerky

Create your own batch of jerky with these simple steps to dehydrating salmon at home.

Make the gochujang marinade

Start by preparing the marinade in a food container that has a tight fitting, leak proof lid. Preferable one that’s glass, since the marinade might discolor plastic. It should hold a minimum volume of 6 cups.

Pour the sesame seeds and spices straight into the container. If you do this first, the measuring spoons will stay clean/dry before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Mix in the oil, soy sauce, chili garlic sauce, maple syrup and gochujang until well combined.

Move this to the side (keep it nearby) while you prepare the salmon. If your using salmon that’s not already weighed out for this recipe, place the bowl directly onto a kitchen scale. That way you can measure it as soon as it’s cut.

Slice salmon

Next, you’ll need a cutting board and a sharp knife.

From either a whole side of salmon or smaller, more individual sized portions, slice the salmon into thin (¼ inch or about ½ centimeter) pieces.

The direction, size and shape of the cuts can vary.

Slicing from individual portions of salmon, perpendicular to the white lines in the fish, will make more square shaped pieces.

If you rotate the fish 90° and slice in the same direction as the white lines in the fish, you’ll get long, narrow and more rectangular shaped pieces. To avoid them being too long though, cut the salmon fillet in half before slicing.

(Trim the thin side from the belly into squares.)

A combination of both cuts can be used in this recipe. Be sure to keep all your cuts the same thickness, otherwise the jerky will dry unevenly and have different textures.

Place the fish directly into the prepared marinade. Once it’s all added, mix until all the fish is evenly coated.

Marinate the fish for 8-10 hours in the refrigerator. This time range is flexible. In a pinch you can do as little as 5 hours or up to 24+ hours.

Time to cook salmon jerky in oven

When the fish is done marinating, line sheet pans (2 large or 4 small) with parchment paper. This is going to take up two racks in the oven.

Pre-heat your oven to it’s lowest temperature. On mine, that’s 170°F. But this recipe can also be cooked at 200°F.

Remove the salmon from the refrigerator. Place onto the prepared sheet pans.

This part gets messy! You want to keep the pieces in a single layer. They can be close together, but shouldn’t overlap each other.

Cook for 10-12 hours, until your desired texture level. After a couple of hours of cooking, carefully flip the fish. Separate any pieces that may have stuck together. Rotate the pans and return to the oven. Check in on the oven every so often as it cooks.

To reduce cooking time (to ~6-7 hours), raise the oven temperature to 200°F. Monitor how the salmon is drying because the jerky will become crispier/harder this way.

Some oil may appear on the parchment paper during the dehydrating process. You can leave it there or remove the jerky and drain it off. (Save & reuse it as your cooking oil for another recipe.) Return the jerky to the pan to continue cooking.

Extra marinade

After transferring the fish to the baking trays, you may have extra sauce leftover.  The amount can vary depending on the fish you use, how it’s cut & how long you marinate it. 

If it’s just a drop, add some extra globs of it to the raw salmon pieces.

If it’s a significant amount, return the extra marinade to the refrigerator. Brush it on the salmon when you flip it for the first time.

IMPORTANT:  DO NOT CONSUME THIS LEFTOVER SAUCE AS IS. Since it was in contact with raw fish, it needs to be cooked. Bring it to a boil before using it on your plate.

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Helpful jerky making tips

To easily slice salmon: (1) make sure you’re using a sharp knife (2) place the salmon in the freezer ~30 minutes before cutting.

For accuracy & easier cleanup, use a kitchen scale to measure the ingredients.

My typical timeline for making this salmon jerky is to purchase fresh fish a full day before I plan to serve the jerky. If I grocery shop in the morning, I’ll marinate the fish during the day and then cook it overnight. If I shop in the evening, I’ll marinate the fish overnight and then cook it throughout the next day.

Your kitchen/home will smell like fish while this is cooking.

Prepare the marinade first. That way the cut fish can go straight in. But not before you have a chance to taste for flavor.

What if you’re hungry & don’t want to wait so long? The salmon is “ready” (aka edible, not yet jerky though) after 1-2 hours. You can split the cooking time. Remove from the oven and enjoy as more of a gochujang salmon recipe. Then return leftovers to the oven to continue drying into jerky.

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What to do with fish jerky

Enjoy as a satisfying snack at home or as a grab and go protein option for travel.

Add to your meal prep routine. Unlike raw or cooked fish, this will last longer.

As a main meal. Leave it whole and pair with some side dishes. Or break it into small pieces for cooked salmon sushi bowls, with lettuce, cucumber, shredded carrot, scallion, rice with a spicy gochujang mayo dressing.

Other oven dried foods

2 ingredient, colorful, & curly, dehydrated carrots.

Waffle cut zucchini slices, coated in a pesto sauce and dehydrated into zucchini chips.

A bunch of fresh kale turned into a crunchy and delicious snack, dehydrated kale chips.

Salmon Jerky Recipe