Baked Honey Lemon Salmon — This baked honey lemon salmon is ready in under 30 minutes! It’s impossible to wind up with dry salmon when making this recipe, it’s just that good! All you need is one sheet pan and 30 minutes and dinner is served!
Table of Contents
This is some of the best salmon I’ve ever made — it’s tied with my Sheet Pan Orange Chili Salmon. It knocked our socks off and we devoured this one pound fillet in five minutes. No joke.
What I love about this honey lemon glazed salmon is that it’s almost foolproof. Meaning it’s nearly impossible to end up with dry salmon because the salmon bakes in a mixture of butter, honey, and lemon juice. Simple ingredients that pack a ton of flavor.
I could drink that buttery elixir of the gods and was literally spooning it in with every bite of tender, juicy salmon.
This roasted lemon salmon is a fast and easy recipe for everything from casual weeknight dinners to fancy dinner parties. You’ll impress your family or your party guests with it. Cleanup is as easy as tossing away the foil!
Recipe Ingredients
For this easy baked salmon with lemon glaze, you’ll need:
- Skin-on salmon fillet
- Whole lemon
- Lemon juice
- Butter
- Honey
- Morton kosher salt
- Black pepper
- Fresh parsley
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
Ingredient Tip
I sprinkled the salmon with a generous pinch of Morton Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper before sealing up the foil pack. The right salt matters. Morton Kosher Salt adds a gourmet touch to the dish. It’s the preferred salt of chefs because it’s easy to control, which creates perfectly seasoned food.
Morton Coarse Sea Salt adds an artistic pop that you can see and taste. The large crystals also provide contrasting texture. Morton Fine Sea Salt is great for blending in all cooking. The fine salt crystals dissolve quickly, making them perfect for marinades, soups, sauces and dressings.
How to Make Honey Lemon Salmon in the Oven
- Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place the salmon skin-side down, then nestle the sliced lemon underneath and around it.
- Stir together honey, melted butter, and lemon juice and pour about two-thirds over the salmon (save the rest for serving!).
- Season the salmon with salt and pepper, then seal up the foil pack before baking for 15 minutes.
- After that time is up, open up the foil pack and broil the salmon on Hi for roughly 5 to 10 minutes, or until the top reaches your desired level of golden brown.
- Garnish with parsley before serving.
I absolutely love this recipe and have cooked it several times. The whole dish is quick and easy to prepare. The best bit is that the honey and lemon caramelize on the top giving it a great depth of flavour.
Jacqueline
Salmon Roasting Tips
Lemons: If possible, buy organic lemons or give regular lemons a good wash under warm water before slicing. Since you’ll be baking the lemon slices with the skin on, you don’t want any nasty chemicals sneaking into your lemon honey salmon.
Lemon juice: For the best flavor, use freshly squeezed lemon juice and not the bottled stuff. Freshly squeezed is so much brighter in flavor and makes a big difference in this lemon salmon recipe!
Salmon skin: You can eat the skin on salmon (some people don’t know that, so I wanted to mention). And if you have any leftover lemon salmon, I suggest enjoying it cold atop sandwiches or salads.
Recipe FAQs
If desired, you can scale back the amount of butter used in this recipe. I love buttery salmon, but if you prefer yours with less butter you can easily adjust the amount in this recipe.
Yes, but the bake times will vary depending on how thick your salmon fillets are. If you use individual pieces of salmon instead of one large salmon fillet, my best advice is to cook the salmon until it’s done and keep an eye on it.
If you don’t feel confident using your broiler or it’s broken, you don’t have to broil the lemon salmon. However, it does add a nice ‘toasting’ effect that you’ll miss out on. If desired, you can continuing baking the salmon in your regular oven – just keep an eye on it so it’s not overdone or become too dry, or underdone and raw.
You’ll know baked salmon is done when it’s opaque in color and flakes easily with a fork. When in doubt, err on the side of slightly undercooking it because it will finish cooking under the intense heat of the broiler. I also let my salmon rest on my counter for about 5 minutes before serving, which gives the carry-over heat from the oven time to finish cooking the inside of the salmon.
Story Time: Morton Salt’s Next Door Chef
I also want to share about a recent trip I took to Nashville for Morton Salt’s Next Door Chef. The experience was hosted by a man, Travis, who wanted to learn to become a better cook and had help in doing so from local celebrity chef, Karl Worley, of Biscuit Love.
Travis’ house was transformed into a pop-up restaurant, Indie’s Kitchen, for one night. I had the pleasure of being a guest along with about a dozen other bloggers.
This was Morton Salt’s second Next Door Chef event and was tied around springtime cooking, perfect for this time of year. Morton Salt has shared that they will be releasing video and recipes from their third Next Door Chef, in New Orleans, this summer.
At the Nashville event, I learned more about the benefits of using Morton Kosher and Sea Salt versus table salt when cooking. Turns out a lot of us are using table salt for almost all cooking purposes which is a big miss in the kitchen. If you usually use table salt for all your cooking needs, you may want to adjust your strategy.
What to Serve with Lemon Glazed Salmon
Storage and Reheating Instructions
Salmon is best warm and fresh but will keep airtight in the fridge for up to 3 days.
In my opinion, salmon doesn’t reheat well so I prefer enjoying any leftovers cold. I’ll add the cold salmon to salads, wraps, sandwiches, etc.
Otherwise you can reheat it gently in the microwave for 30-second bursts or in a 350ºF oven for 5 to 8 minutes.
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Sheet Pan Honey Lemon Salmon
Ingredients
- 1 to 1.25 pounds skin-on salmon fillet
- 1 lemon, sliced into thin rounds
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 3 to 4 tablespoons honey
- 2 to 3 tablespoons lemon juice, from about 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon Morton Kosher Salt, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley, optional for garnishing
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F and place a piece of foil on the baking sheet to cover it completely.
- Place salmon on the foil (with the longer side parallel with the longer side of the sheet pan) with the skin-side down. Raise the edges of the foil up about 2 inches (or enough so that when you pour the buttery mixture over the top it will be contained in the foil).
- Nestle lemon slices underneath the salmon, spaced evenly around the fillet; set aside.
- To a microwave-safe glass measuring cup or bowl, add the butter and heat on high power to melt, about 1 minute.
- Stir in the honey and lemon juice. Pour or spoon about two-thirds of the mixture over the salmon; reserve remainder.
- Evenly season with Morton Kosher Salt and pepper, to taste.
- Seal up the foil. Likely you will need to add another sheet of foil on top in order to seal it. Crimp or pinch the top and bottom pieces of foil together; get it as air-tight as possible but it doesn’t have to be perfect. If you have time, set aside to marinate for about 10 to 15 minutes (enhanced flavor).
- Bake for about 15 minutes.
- Remove salmon from the oven and remove the top piece of foil or open up the packet so salmon is exposed but keep the edges raised to contain the buttery mixture.
- Set oven to Hi broil.
- Spoon the reserved buttery mixture over the salmon, if desired. Use your judgment and if there’s already lots of juice you don’t need to add it because you don’t want it to start leaking. If you have extra buttery mixture, it’s great served over the finished dish.
- Broil salmon for about 5 to 10 minutes, or until as golden as desired. Keep a close eye on it because all broilers are different and you don’t want it to burn. Exact broiling time will depend on the size and thickness of the salmon, climate and oven variances, and personal preference.
- Optionally garnish with parsley and serve immediately. Salmon is best warm and fresh but will keep airtight in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Lemon Dill Salmon with Vegetables in Parchment — An easy, healthy dinner with virtually no cleanup that’s ready in 20 minutes. The salmon is tender, juicy, and boldly flavored with lemon and dill.
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Post is brought to you by Morton. The recipes, images, text, and opinions expressed are my own.
Originally posted March 22, 2017 and reposted with updated text September 22, 2021.
Hi! Making tonite! You say early on “What I love about this honey garlic recipe is that it’s almost foolproof” but we dont see garlic in the ingredients. So we will leave garlic out. Eat salmon every week so always looking for good recipes
Typo in the body of the post, sorry! But follow the recipe card which indicates no garlic. You could add it, or make this one which is amazing too https://www.averiecooks.com/sheet-pan-garlic-lemon-butter-salmon/
Very easy and so good. Don’t omit the broiling part
great
I wanted this to be delicious, but mine turned out super bitter. I think maybe it was because of the peel on the lemon slices placed under the salmon? Has anyone else had this problem?
I wanted this to be delicious, but mine turned out super bitter. I think maybe it was because of the peel on the lemon slices placed under the salmon? Has anyone else had this problem?
It probably was the lemon rind, but I have never had anyone else ever mention this and I’ve made this recipe soooo many times and I’ve never had it happen either. Then I would say just peel the lemons next time or prop up your fish in such a way that isn’t touching the rind.
I absolutely love this recipe and have cooked it several times. The whole dish is quick and easy to prepare. The best bit is that the honey and lemon caramelize on the top giving it a great depth of flavour.
I absolutely love this recipe and have cooked it several times. The whole dish is quick and easy to prepare. The best bit is that the honey and lemon caramelize on the top giving it a great depth of flavour.
Thanks for the 5 star review and glad you’ve made it several times and you love it!
Very good. I made this with wonderful results. Only changes were: I cut down the butter amount and the salmon was skinless.
Everyone liked it.
Thank you.
If instead of one large salmon fillet you’re using 3 or 4 5 oz. fillets, preheat your oven to 475°. Cut one, 12″ square piece of (non-stick) foil for each piece.
Place one fillet, diagonally, on each piece of foil. Divide the lemon slices according to the number of fillets, and tuck them under each fillet.
Make the butter/lemon juice/honey sauce as directed, then fold up the “flaps” on each piece of foil a bit to contain the sauce; pouring a bit over each fillet.
Season with salt & pepper.
Bring the flaps up and over each fillet, leaving a bit of an airspace, then seal each packet.
Place the packets in a shallow baking pan, and bake 10 minutes for medium rare; 12 minutes for well-done.
Open each packet carefully and slide the fillets onto individual plates using a spatula.
Garnish with parsley and pass extra sauce at the table.
If you REALLY want to brown the fillets I would recommend using a kitchen torch instead of the broiler as it’s too easy to accidentally overcook the salmon if you finish it under the broiler, especially if your broiler is the drawer type located underneath the oven.
Many people (most) don’t have kitchen torches but I agree if you have one, even better. A broiler is more universal which is why I suggest it although you definitely need to keep an eye on it.
With the drawer type broilers you’re very limited in how far away from the element you can place the food. In addition, you have to close the drawer all the way to broil and there isn’t a window to watch the food whilst broiling (probably because you’d have to lie on the floor to see it anyway). So you have to continuously open and close the drawer to check on the food. Salmon is very delicate and under a broiler can go from done to tasteless and dried out in less than a minute, so I do NOT recommend using a drawer type broiler to cook OR finish salmon (or any other type of fish, really).
We made this tonight and when we went to broil it the foil and everything caught on fire after not even 30 seconds of being in the oven 😱😱😱
I am sorry to hear that happened!!
Broiling is no joke. In the future, if you ever do try this again, or any broiled recipe, I recommend moving your top shelf down so it’s not right underneath the broiler, or simply placing the sheet pan on the middle rack of the oven and broiling at a distance much lower down.
Hi Averie, just had to say how much I enjoy your blog and your recipes are ALWAYS excellent, easy to prepare and easy to follow! Keep it coming as I do look forward to seeing what’s new! Cheers!
Thank you very much for your compliments. I appreciate you taking the time to leave something positive like this, thanks!!
Thanks for sharing! So delicious in flavor, moist, easy and fast to bake. Just changed a few things cause I didn’t have fresh parsley.
Hey Averie, this looks absolutely delicious. First of all 10/10 for wonderful food photography. Do you have any YouTube channel? I would love to follow the channel to watch recipes in detail.
Hey Averie, this looks absolutely delicious. First of all 10/10 for wonderful food photography. Do you have any YouTube channel? I would love to follow the channel to watch recipes in detail.
Thanks for the 5 star review and I am glad it was delish! Thanks for the compliments on my food photography. I don’t have a youtube channel but many of my popular recipes have videos that are either on my site on the specific recipe. Or all of them are here https://www.facebook.com/pg/AverieCooks/videos/
Made this recipe for the potluck everyone said It’s so delicious. Definitely will make it again!!