Chipotle Brown Sugar Salmon & Potatoes

Just a warning for you – if you’re anything like me, you’re going to form a real habit of drowning all the things in this ridiculously tasty chipotle brown sugar vinaigrette. It’s a lusciously smoky-sweet combination of chipotles and adobo, brown sugar, fresh garlic, and oil + vinegar and it totally rules the recipe, to be honest. It’s the star. Yes, this Chipotle Brown Sugar Salmon and Potatoes gets all of its pizzaz from the sauce. So, as they say … that’s where the secret is.

Kitchen Little Essentials

For this Chipotle Brown Sugar Salmon and Potatoes, you will need:

A large sheet pan

A blender

How to Make this Chipotle Brown Sugar Salmon and Potatoes

To kick it all off, we’re going to set the oven temp to 400 degrees and get your oven rack to the middle position. This allows for the most even, all around roasting.

The potatoes we’re using in this recipe are those extra small ones that you see very readily available in the produce section of just about every supermarket these days. But honestly, if you cannot seem to find the ones labeled “petite potatoes” just buy the smallest ones you can find and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Call it good, don’t worry, be happy.

Throw the potatoes on a large sheet pan and coat in a good amount olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Roast for 15 minutes.

The Secret is in the Sauce

Meanwhile, back at the ranch! Ha. No but really – while the potatoes are doing their thing in the oven, we’re going to throw together the super delicious chipotle brown sugar sauce (which is really a vinaigrette).

To make it, just put the chipotle and adobo in a high-speed blender along with the garlic clove, vinegar, and brown sugar and process until blended. In a slow, steady stream with the motor running, drizzle in the remaining ½ cup olive oil. Blend until smooth. Season to your liking with salt and pepper. Voila. Done! 

When the potatoes have roasted for about 15 minutes, take the pan out of the oven and add the salmon fillets. Drizzle with a little bit of the vinaigrette, toss to coat (both the salmon and the potatoes) and lay some lemon slices down over top of the fish and potatoes. The lemon slices, incidentally, will drip out their juices and sort of perfume the other things with their citrusy glow. It’s just a nice touch, I think, though admittedly, an optional one.

Roast for an additional 15 minutes or so, or just until the salmon is cooked through (this will vary a bit, depending on the thickness and size of your fish).

Serve the salmon and potatoes with extra chipotle-brown sugar sauce drizzled over top. 

No matter how you shake it, this is one terrifically easy, supremely tasty sheet pan dinner. And let me just tell you – I will never, ever tire of recipes like this one. I am about as big of a cooking/food geek as they come – I welcome intense coking projects that take over my kitchen and entire weekends at a time. But that is only some of the time.

The vast majority of the time, I’m over here – cooking up easy, accessible, realistic food in my kitchen little that takes little thought, effort, money and or time to pull off.

Because real life.

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