Cooking Oven Baked Salmon is already easy enough, but with this foil method, you’ll completely eliminate the need for cleanup all. Best of all, it only takes about 20 minutes!
We love quick and easy meals like this where everything is done in one simple foil packet, leaving you with a lot of extra time on your hands and a dinner that everyone will rave over. This is not only the easiest salmon recipe but also one of the most satisfying ones as well.
🐟 Why This Recipe Works
Quick – We are all putting together lists of recipes that can be our “go-to” ones when we need to eat fast and stay healthy at the same time. This one is so fast that you will find it will jump right into your monthly rotation.
Hands Off – We all love hands off recipes when we need quick and healthy recipes for our families. It can be a hard combination to pull together, but this one knocks it out of the park every time. Pop it in the oven, set the table, change laundry and get ready for the evening activities and your dinner will be ready. It’s not quite as hands off as a crockpot recipe, but it is right up there for us.
Meal Prep Friendly – Prep these up in the morning or a couple of hours before dinner time. Grab them out of the refrigerator and pop them in the oven for a meal that is ready to go in under 30 minutes. You may have 10 minutes to prep these in the morning or even at 3pm before the kiddos get off the bus. Sneak in time to prepare this ahead of time so you can give your full attention to the family instead of cooking the meal. Normally, we look at meal prep as a Sunday ahead of the week option. This one is a one to prep early in the morning. Take a look at Meal Prep 101 to kick start your meal prep IQ.
🍴 Ingredients
Salmon– I always stock up on salmon when they go on sale. They freeze extremely well and are a staple in my diet as I try to shift to eating less red meat. Cook this with the skin on or off. I kept the skin on in the photos. The skin will peel right away from the meat after it is cooked so you don’t need to worry too much about keeping it on while cooking.
Asparagus – Not only does the asparagus taste delicious, they serve as a prop to keep the salmon off of the foil which minimizes any chances of burning.
🍽️ Instructions
Preparing this is so simple and your family will be shocked with how delicious it is!
Step One: Lay out four pieces of foil large enough to cover the asparagus and salmon and make a pouch. Mine are usually 14 x 16 inches or so.
Step Two: Prepare the asparagus by cutting off the hard, woody ends and throw them away. Place the asparagus on the foil. Set the salmon fillet on top. I used wild caught coho salmon for this because it was on sale at Costco.
Step Three: Place a pad of butter and a slice or two of lemon on top along with a pinch salt and pepper on each fillet.
Step Four: Gather up two sides of the foil and fold over. Then fold over the ends. Don’t make these too tight.
Step Five: Place the foil packs on a sheet pan and cook at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Fully cooked salmon should be at 145 degrees and should always be tested.
📌 Items to Note
This is a low calorie dinner for anyone looking to cut a few calories out of their daily diet. Oh, did I mention there are only about 300 calories per serving? I had an idea that it was sort of light on calories when I was whipping this up, but didn’t realize how low it was until I popped it into a calculator.
I recommend serving this with a side of brown rice.
🥦 Substitutions
When choosing other vegetable options, think of ones that will cook at the same rate as the salmon. I like to use:
- Mushrooms
- Onions
- Red or Green Peppers
- Thinly Sliced Carrots
- Broccoli
You can certainly use squash, but it will easily become over-cooked and mushy. If you don’t mind a softer squash, then that would be great!
🧑🍳 Meal Preparation
This is a super quick meal all on its own but there is still meal prep options you can do to make it even easier for those busy weeknight meals.
- Completely prep 100% of the recipe in the morning and place the foil pack in the fridge so when you walk in the door at night, you simply turn on the oven and pop it in.
- Prepare the asparagus, slice up the butter and make sure the salmon is ready to go if you bought it in a large fillet.
- Additionally, prep the sheet pan and the foil so it is ready to just have the salmon and asparagus placed on them leaving this to a five minute prep meal.
Recipe FAQ
No, it doesn’t. Between the salmon resting on asparagus, the juices from the salmon and the little bit of butter, there is just no way it sticks.
You can make this just the same out on the grill. Make the foil pack just as you would for the oven and then place on the hot grill that is set to about 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. I would check it early to see how it is doing as grills can be finicky at times.
Related Recipes
Tried this recipe? Please leave a star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating in the recipe card below and/or a review in the comments section further down the page. You can also stay in touch with me through social media by following me on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook!
Foil Baked Salmon with Asparagus
Ingredients
- 4 Salmon Fillets
- 1 Lemon
- 2 tbsp Butter cut into 8 pats of butter
- 1.5 lbs Asparagus use the tops
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
- Wash asparagus and cut the spears in half. Place asparagus tops in a large bowl. Save and store the bottom of the spears for other uses like stir fries or soups.
- Cut a piece of aluminum foil and place the asparagus to form the bed
- Add the salmon fillet. I used wild caught coho salmon that was on sale at Costco, but any variety will work great!
- Cut a small amount of stick butter and place on top of the salmon
- Slice a lemon and place on the top
- Sprinkle with sea salt, pepper and juice from one half of a lemon over the top. Fold the foil packets and close them (seam side up) and place on a sheet pan in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until asparagus is fork tender and salmon reaches desired temperature.
Notes
Nutrition
I used this recipe last night and it turned out great. I used two, larger pieces of salmon and added dill along with the other ingredients. It only needed 25 minutes and everything was perfectly cooked. Yum!
Hey do you think I could use chicken breast instead of the salmon?
Absolutely fantastic recipe. I’ve never been much of a Salmon fan, but this dish has changed everything. I made it exactly as instructed. Only required 25 minutes and came out delicious. Thank you for sharing and I look forward to many more recipes!
Whoa this recipe has been shared so many times! As much as I loved to cook, I admit this quick recipe is just what I need sometimes. You’ve inspired me to look up other foil baking recipes. Thanks!
Thanks, Chris! Welcome to the world of foil baking. Great for avoiding clean up (which is the worst part of cooking lol)!
I made this! It was SO tasty! And, im no cook, but this recipe really easy to make. My BF loved it. We both did!! Thanks for posting this recipe. I look forward to more!! 🙂
This turned out perfect! I would not change a thing about this recipe. So simple, quick and healthy! A must try!
Tried this with rainbow trout instead of salmon and margarine instead of butter. Still very very good. If I were to make it again I would forego squeezing the lemon juice onto the fish as it was a strong lemon flavor than I like. I would just do the lemon slices and I think that would be a sufficiently mild taste for me.
Great idea though, made me four meals for the week! 🙂
I don’t usually comment on things like this, but this was too good not to! I found this recipe on pinterest a couple of weeks ago and finally tried it last night! It was AMAZING! My husband does not typically like fish, but he ate this up and kept telling me how much he loved it. He even asked me to fix it again!!! We paired it with a sweet potato and it was perfect! Thank you so much!!!
I’m excited to try this!!! But one question my salmon is fresh an still has skin, do you remove the skin. The picture looks like it’s skinless but I wanted to be sure.
Hey Autumn! Personally, I’d remove the skin first since I don’t think this will cooking method will produce a crispy skin on the salmon since it’s quite buttery and saucy.
You said you used salmon fillets from a package, were they frozen when you put them in the foil pack?
I believe they were thawed prior to cooking, Sarah.
sounds good but your calorie count is off unless you are using the smallest salmon fillets in the history of man. a 4oz serving of salmon is 236 calories alone, and thats a pretty small portion.
Hi Katy, I used the calorie count for the salmon fillets from the package, so it is indeed accurate. I will agree with you that they are quite small… I believe they are around 4oz.
think you could swap out the asparagus for green beans? I just already have green beans in my fridge right now
Sure can! You can even place the green beans on top of the salmon if you want to make sure they don’t get soggy.
can you prepare this and freeze for later?
I’ve never tried this myself, Destiny, but I think the salmon would do well frozen. I would personally freeze it without the asparagus since I’m not too sure how well asparagus does when frozen.
This was great… However I’ll be cooking my salmon in a separate pouch in the future bc it came out a bit over cooked… Did not need as long as the recipe suggests. The asparagus was perfect, except for the fact that it was covered in salmon fat from sitting beneath the fillets. Taste wise however, the dish was phenomenal, a big hit with my boyfriend. Thanks!
Would this work with green beans or another veggie? Asparagus is one thing my husband won’t eat, but he’ll eat others.
I would only place harder vegetables that can support the weight of the salmon (and that wouldn’t become mushy) on the bottom. But I’m confident that you can place the salmon at the bottom of the packet and place any vegetable on top. I think green beans would work well.
Yes you can replace it with fresh green means or any other similar density vegetable.