Slow baking delivers perfect salmon
Experts say meeting real-life challenges is best way for them to build self-efficacy
Savory-sweet fish, topped with tangles of herbs and bright lemon juice, looks and tastes like a celebration for your pandemic pod. There’s an unexpected inverse relationship between how easy it is to make this dish and how special it feels when it’s served.
A four-ingredient, five-minute glaze coats a single slab of salmon, and the whole thing comes together in under 30 minutes.
While it helps to start with the highest-quality salmon, any fresh option will be delicious using this slow-baked technique. It yields tender fish that flakes apart in silky slips and prevents the squeaky dry bites and excess white protein globs of salmon that’s been cooked too hard or too long or both.
In “The River Cottage Fish Book,” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher explain: “It’s not that cooking fish is difficult. It’s just that overcooking fish is easy.”
Baking salmon at a low temperature helps prevent that and yields a balance of opaque and translucent flesh that is sometimes referred to as “medium-rare.”
Even though that description is somewhat accurate, it’s confusing to use the same language you’d use for steak with fish. Fish cooks much faster, and its ideal internal temperature is 120-130 degrees, which would be very rare in steak.
But you don’t need a meat thermometer to know when salmon is done. You just need to stop cooking it when it feels nearly hot.
To test for the right temperature, slide a metal cake tester or thin paring knife into the fillet’s thickest part, hold it there for a few seconds, then press the
tip against your upper lip, which is sensitive to heat. It should feel very warm.
The salmon will continue cooking on its way to the table and end up hot in the center as it rests while everyone gathers to eat.
The method alone delivers perfect salmon, and the glaze guarantees an impressive main dish. Maple syrup tastes festive with its natural sweetness, and a dollop of mayonnaise ensures richness.
Since the salmon doesn’t
brown or crisp in low heat, it gets pops of crunch from whole mustard seeds and finely sliced cilantro stems instead. The stems — and roots — carry an intense aroma, echoed by the delicate leafy tops that garnish.
Served straight from the baking dish, this simple centerpiece is as quick to clean up as it is to prepare. It’s the sort of low-effort cooking that leaves you with time for a well-deserved rest.
Maple baked salmon
Makes: 4 servings
1 (1 ½-pound) skin-on or skinless salmon fillet 12 fresh cilantro sprigs
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup 2 tablespoons whole-grain Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper Lemon wedges, for serving
1. Remove salmon from the refrigerator. Heat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Bundle the cilantro sprigs by their stems and hold them tightly, then slice the stems crosswise until you get to the leaves. Reserve leaves for garnish. Transfer sliced stems to a small bowl and stir in the maple syrup, mustard and mayonnaise until well mixed. 3. Season the salmon all over with salt and pepper and place in a baking dish, skin-side down if there is skin. Slather the maple sauce all over the top.
4. Bake until a paring knife slides into the center with only a little resistance, 15 to 20 minutes. When you remove the knife and touch the blade to your upper lip, it should feel very warm but not hot. The salmon will continue to heat through out of the oven while in the baking dish. Top with the reserved cilantro leaves, and squeeze lemon wedges all over just before serving.
Note: For 8 servings, buy a whole side of salmon, which usually weighs 2 ½ to3½ pounds, and double the glaze ingredients. Bake until medium-rare, 18 to 22 minutes.
I begged my 12-yearold to help me with the pandemic task of learning to dye my hair at home. I could have done it myself, but I’ve learned that small opportunities to feel useful and successful are good for kids’ mental health, which I’m especially attuned to in our current circumstances.
Among the other ideas I’ve tried during these long months: letting my kids practice phone skills by having them call to order takeout and asking them for help with setting up the Wi-Fi booster. In some cases, it would be faster to just do these things without their “help,” but I’m doing it deliberately, to benefit my kids.
It might seem like a strange time to ask parents to take a new approach — don’t we have enough to juggle? But focusing on helping our kids develop what psychologists call “self-efficacy,” or a person’s belief that they are capable of successfully meeting the tasks or challenges that face them, can yield immediate benefits.
But can such small tasks really instill a sense of control right now, in a pandemic? It’s possible, experts say, and allowing kids to try to meet reallife challenges is the best way for them to build that healthy self-efficacy. Albert Bandura, the Stanford University psychologist who first developed the concept of self-efficacy in the 1970s, called these important first-person accomplishments “mastery experiences.”
Lea Waters, professor of positive psychology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, said self-efficacy “is a primal part of the formula of good mental health, because without that sense of efficacy, without that belief that I can get things done, you can really easily see how a young person or even an adult would not only lose their confidence but lose their motivation to move forward.”
Humans thrive on a sense of control and capability; low self-efficacy, or learned helplessness, is associated with anxiety, depression, lack of hope and lack of motivation, she said, while higher selfefficacy is associated with life satisfaction, self-confidence, social connection and growth mindset.
Mastery experiences don’t have to be grand accomplishments. Waters pointed to things as small as kids completing “a Lego build that was a little bit hard,” packing their own backpacks or walking the dog by themselves.
She suggests that parents become detectives who notice a child’s successes and narrate them. This purposeful shift toward noticing and acknowledging small wins helps parents take a positive approach while it also helps kids internalize a sense of their growing abilities.
“We can spot those things and acknowledge, ‘You did that really well; you did that all by yourself,’ or ‘You didn’t need as much help from me this time around,’ ” she said.
These successes build up what she called a “bank account” of feelings of efficacy for children that they can draw on the next time they face a challenge, when parents can remind the child, “You know, last time you felt that way, and then you ended up being able to do it all by yourself.”
Of course, you don’t want to pile on more responsibilities than a child can handle. Parents should always be attentive to children’s health, ensuring that they don’t see signs of mental health issues that warrant professional support, said child and adolescent psychotherapist Katie Hurley, author of “The Happy Kid Handbook.”
“Every kid is different,” Hurley said. “Take a deep breath and say, ‘What is my kid like without a pandemic?’ ” Watch for concerning changes in sleep; eating significantly less or more; new anxious behaviors such as constant reassurance-seeking or clinginess; a significant loss of focus; and less interest in connecting with friends, even in favorite ways like social media or video games, she said.
“Trust that when you feel that in your gut that something isn’t right, then it’s probably a good idea to get help.”
The impulse to “help” our kids by doing more for them is sometimes more about us than it is about our kids, said Ned Johnson, co-author of “The SelfDriven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives.”
Research has shown that when parents jump in to help kids with a frustrating problem, that intervention can lower parent anxiety while leaving the child’s anxiety elevated, Johnson said. That’s because the anxious parent gains a sense of control from taking action rather than remaining helpless on the sidelines, but the child is still left feeling ineffectual and stressed.
It can be hard for parents to let children do more, and perhaps mess up, when a parent could do a task more quickly and effectively. But the pandemic has lowered the stakes in some common family situations. For example, when kids are doing remote learning and don’t have to catch the bus, they can take on responsibility for waking themselves up. If the child oversleeps, the parents aren’t stuck playing chauffeur; only the child will experience the natural consequences of lateness, Johnson said, making it easier for parents to let go of some control.
With everyone spending more time at home, families can share tasks more readily, too, even if they’re not done perfectly. A preschooler with a broom may not necessarily be cleaning the floor well, but the child feels that efficacybuilding sense of accomplishment and helpfulness when they are encouraged to try it for themselves, Johnson said, and “the experience of coping increases.”
If this all sounds like too much work in a pandemic, remember that parents who encourage their children’s strengths and selfefficacy not only help their kids but also themselves.
“Parents are really depleted,” Waters acknowledged, but a positive, proactive approach is “kind of a win-win. It’s good for your kids,” and seeing children thrive is “good for us as parents as well,” she said. And her research has found that using a strengths-building approach — finding areas where your kids can take on more responsibility — is also correlated with an increase in parental selfefficacy, a sense that “you are doing the right thing as a parent.”
Courtney Ackerman, author of several positive psychology books, also counsels parents not to wait until the current crisis is over to instill more self-efficacy in children. Yes, working on developing resilience in these unpredictable times may feel like shoveling while the snow is still falling, she said, but that’s OK.
“I think it’s always snowing,” she said. “It’s a specifically difficult time now with the pandemic, but life is full of ups and downs.”
Now is an excellent time, perhaps better than any other, she said, to work on building a sense of selfefficacy in kids. And if that means parents aren’t the only ones endlessly loading and unloading the dishwasher, so much the better.
MINNEAPOLIS — Ever since the pandemic began, Amanda Schermerhorn has put her children’s schooling before her own.
Managing her four kids’ ever-changing remote and in-person class schedules is often a full day’s work. So Schermerhorn, a full-time student at Minnesota State Community and Technical College in Detroit Lakes, works around the clock, carving out time to complete her online classwork late at night and early in the morning.
“Juggling four schedules in addition to mine definitely makes it a lot more hectic,” said Schermerhorn, who used to study during the day while her kids were at school. “We’re all feeling a little stressed.”
College students have battled stress and burnout during the pandemic, but perhaps no group of students has been more overwhelmed than those who are raising children while they pursue a degree. These students are scrambling daily to meet class deadlines, earn a paycheck and oversee their children’s lessons. And they are weathering this exhausting academic year without the in-person study groups, tutoring sessions and campus resources they typically rely on.
Now more than ever, advocates say, colleges and universities must prioritize the roughly 1 in 5 undergraduates who are raising children. Student parents, most of whom are women, are far less likely to finish college than others, with just 37% graduating within six years of enrollment, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The obstacles they face, from child care affordability to economic insecurity, have only been exacerbated by the pandemic.
“Parenting students’ college enrollment is one of the first things that will get sacrificed for
employment or to support their children,” said Carrie Welton, director of policy and advocacy at Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice.
Schermerhorn, 35, has sacrificed sleep, personal time and peace of mind this past year. She’s balancing a full slate of online classes and two internships this semester while caring for her 14-year-old twins, Travis and Ella, 11-year-old son Sylas and 7-year-old son Richard, who has autism.
When her kids log into class from their home, Schermerhorn stays off the internet to avoid overloading it and waits until night to complete her assignments or parks in front of the college to use the Wi-Fi.
“I want my kids to do well in school, so they are going to take precedence over my work,” Schermerhorn said.
Colleges are doing what they can to support student parents during this time, even though most on-campus services have
been scaled back. They are offering emergency grants to those who are struggling financially. And professors are negotiating deadline extensions and letting parents turn off their webcams during class so they can tend to their kids.
Khou Vue, Metropolitan State University’s student parent and resource coordinator, schedules one-on-one video appointments with students who are struggling to balance their studies and parenthood. She also organizes Zoom workshops and virtual activities to foster a sense of belonging. “We understand that building relationships is a big part of retention,” Vue said.
Advisers at the University of Minnesota’s Student Parent Help Center have had less success arranging virtual meetings and support groups because many students are “Zoomed out,” said Susan Warfield, the center’s program director.
The center’s counselors have instead focused on direct outreach, calling every student
parent twice per semester to see how they are doing. “Some started crying immediately and said, ‘I’m just drowning,’ ” Warfield said. “They were too overwhelmed to think about asking for help.”
State leaders are trying to offer support, too. In his budget proposal released last month, Gov. Tim Walz recommended simplifying the state’s postsecondary child care grant program’s application and award process so more student parents can benefit.
For some parents, the pandemic created the ideal conditions for them to go back to school.
Elena Williams, 29, enrolled in online classes at Minneapolis Community and Technical College last fall. She said she was able to do so only because her full-time job at an accounting firm has also gone remote. Now, Williams can work and pursue a degree from home while caring for her 4-year-old son, Parker.
There are still challenges, like when Parker climbs on his mom’s lap or makes shadow puppets in the background of her Zoom classes — “It’s fun when Mom is on webcam,” Williams laughed. She hopes to eventually earn a bachelor’s degree that will help her secure a promotion and higher salary.
“I don’t want to frame the pandemic as being a good thing, but it’s like I’m getting that opportunity because there’s this increased understanding for what’s going on in people’s lives,” Williams said. She hopes colleges will continue to offer a robust slate of online classes.
Even once the pandemic lets up, Schermerhorn does not expect life to get any less hectic.
Schermerhorn will transfer to Minnesota State University, Moorhead, this fall to pursue a bachelor’s degree in political science. If classes are in person, her round-trip commute from home to the campus will total about two hours.
“Just when you think it can’t get any crazier, then it will,” she said, describing life as a student parent.