One-pan Salmon with Asparagus, Mushrooms, and Balsamic Brown Butter Sauce

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner – and it’s ready in only 20 minutes!

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

If you make one recipe from my blog this week, this should be it!

This one-pan salmon with asparagus is one of the best things I’ve made on this blog.

Hands down.

It’s definitely going on our regular meal rotation. I wish salmon was less expensive, but when you do decide to make the splurge and buy a pound, this is 100% the meal you should make.

When I recently asked what you wanted to see more of on the blog, you said main dish meals that aren’t salads.

Well, ask and ye shall receive.

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

Not only is it not a salad, it’s also one of the easiest and quickest things to make! It takes 20 minutes start to finish, including trimming your asparagus. And most of that is hands-off. I don’t know how much more simple you can get!

I’ve been making a variation of this recipe for probably a decade. It’s from Allrecipes.com and is just the recipe for the roasted asparagus. I highly recommend the asparagus as a side dish.

When challenged with making a whole meal out of it, I knew the flavor of the balsamic brown butter sauce would go perfectly with salmon. Plus, the cook temperature and time is the same for the salmon as it is for the asparagus, so it could easily go on the same sheet pan. And why not throw some mushrooms in with it, too, so you really get a meat and two sides on one pan!

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

Oh. My. Goodness.

When I thought the balsamic brown butter sauce would go well with salmon, that was the understatement of the year.

The sauce doesn’t just go well with salmon. The sauce and salmon are soul mates. They were created to be together and spent their whole lives looking for each other, and they can finally exchange their eternal vows on your dinner plate and live happily forever after in this recipe.

Seriously.

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

I’ve baked salmon before with butter and soy sauce and it’s really good, but when you brown the butter and add in a little balsamic as well, it’s truly next level. It’s like candy (in its addictiveness, not sweetness). I literally drank the sauce out of the bottom of my tupperware in front of all my coworkers in the break room after I finished the leftovers for lunch.

Together with the browned butter the soy sauce and balsamic vinegar take on a new and incredible flavor that is unparalleled. It is a sauce that is truly more than the sum of its parts.

So, enough about how I could drink the sauce as a beverage with my dinner. Let me give you a couple tips on how to make this incredible (and incredibly easy) one-pan salmon dish.

A note about asparagus:

If you haven’t cooked with asparagus much and aren’t sure why (and how) you need to trim it, asparagus should be nice and tender but the thick end tends to be fibrous and woody. There are people who swear you can just take a knife and cut off the last two inches of your asparagus across the board and be good, but I inevitably run across several stalks that I end up chewing like cud for a few minutes before indelicately spitting a tumbleweed of asparagus splinters into a napkin when people prepare it this way. 

Instead, I find that each stalk of asparagus is unique in where it wants to be broken. So, I don’t technically trim it.

And having just re-watched Legally Blonde, I’m going to call this move the “Bend and snap”.

Thank you, tumblr, for this lovely illustration.

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

What you do is hold your asparagus about a third to halfway down from the narrow end with one hand, and at the base of the thick end with your other hand. Then bend the asparagus until it snaps. It will naturally break at the point where it stops being tough and splintery.

For some pieces it may be a couple inches, and for others you may end up discarding nearly half the stalk. People will say this is a waste of asparagus, but the only part you’re “wasting” is the part you’d end up chewing for five minutes and spitting out.

Bend and snap! Works every time!

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

As a bonus, now you don’t have to wash a cutting board! Win-win! 

It only takes a couple minutes to snap the whole bunch of asparagus. Rinse it off and pat dry with paper towels.

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

The rest of the meal prep is basically:

  • Put everything on a sheet pan with some olive oil, salt and pepper
  • Stick it in the oven
  • Make the 5-minute brown butter sauce
  • Devour everything

It’s so stinkin’ easy, and all you have to wash is your sheet pan and tiny sauce pot.

And I find it amazing that the same time, temperature, and preparation on three different ingredients can cook each one perfectly: The asparagus is a little caramelized but still crisp, the mushrooms are browned and flavorful, and the salmon is flaky, juicy, and ever-so slightly on the rare side – just perfect.

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

The worst thing is ruining a perfectly good piece of salmon by overcooking it until it’s dry and sucks the moisture out of your mouth. There’s a fine line between perfectly cooked and dry as dust with salmon. It will depend on the thickness and cut of your salmon but mine were about an inch thick in the middle, for reference.

To summarize, this meal is:

  • SO EASY
  • 20 minutes start to finish
  • the most delicious thing you’ll ever put in your mouth
  • hardly any prep or cleanup
  • the best dinner I’ve ever made on this blog
  • absolute perfection
  • definitely happening for me again this week
One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

Let me know if you love this one-pan salmon meal as much as I do! I’m working on some more non-salad dinners for you too. If you have any other requests on what you’d like to see more of on the blog, let me know in the comments!

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com
4.67 from 3 votes

One-pan Salmon with Asparagus, Mushrooms, and Balsamic Brown Butter Sauce

One-pan salmon with asparagus, mushrooms, and balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner – and it’s ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal!Adapted from CAE on Allrecipes.com.
Print Recipe Save Recipe
Course: Main Course
Yield: 2 people
Prep Time:5 minutes
Cook Time:15 minutes
Total Time:20 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 bunch asparagus snapped and rinsed (see tips in post)
  • 1 pint sliced button mushrooms
  • 1 lb salmon fillet
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • kosher salt and pepper
  • 4 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  • On a large sheet pan, toss asparagus and mushrooms in 1 tbsp olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Arrange in a single layer.
  • Place salmon fillets skin-side down on top of vegetables. Brush with remaining olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  • Bake for 15 minutes.
  • About 5 minutes before baking is finished, melt butter in a tiny saucepan over medium or medium-high heat. It will foam up – stir it constantly for a couple minutes until the foam subsides and the butter starts to take on a rich brown color.
  • When the butter is brown (careful not to burn it!) remove it from the heat and stir in the soy sauce and vinegar.
  • Remove the pan from the oven, and peel off salmon skin. Drizzle sauce over everything on the sheet pan.
  • Enjoy. Drink the sauce when you’re done.
Tried this recipe?Mention @pinchmeimeating or tag #pinchmeimeating on Instagram!
One-pan salmon with asparagus and mushrooms with balsamic brown butter sauce is the easiest, most delicious dinner - and it's ready in only 20 minutes! This is my new favorite meal! | www.pinchmeimeating.com

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15 Comments

  1. It’s fall and asparagus is so darn expensive right now. Do you think I could use frozen broccoli or cauliflower with the mushroom? TIA!

  2. 5 stars
    Just found your site…tried the salmon…..just the best….and I have cooked many a salmon….looking forward to trying and reading more!

  3. Thanks for the nice recipe. It worked as promised, and I’ll make it again soon. Regarding the sauce, I wonder if I did something wrong….. The butter turned the rich brown. I took it off the heat and stirred in the soy sauce and the balsamic vinegar, but it all remained separated. I could whisk it together, but after a second it would separate again. The taste was fine. The texture probably would have been better had the sauce combined, or so I’m thinking.. I look forward to trying the recipe again. It’s quick and lovely. Many thanks, Ruth Whetsel

    1. I’m so glad you enjoyed this, Ruth! If you’d like you could cool the sauce a bit after mixing it together so the butter resolidifies some. I’d imagine it would be more of a spreadable texture and you could put a bit on the hot salmon and veggies when they come out of the oven to re-melt it.

  4. 5 stars
    So I’ve had this pinned for years but just tried it tonight. This is amazing. Like restaurant quality amazing. And so easy!!!! Thank you!!

    1. I haven’t tried it with steak, but I’m sure the sauce would go wonderfully with one!

      Personally, I’d probably cook the steak separately on my Griddler, but if you want to stick with the one-pan thing I did find this website with some instructions on cooking a steak in the oven at 400 degrees.

      Looks like you could start the veggies in the oven first and add the steak about 5 minutes in, and then you’d have a medium-ish steak at the end of it. I haven’t tried it, so no guarantees, but please let me know if it works!

  5. FYI, when you buy asparagus, also buy the one with the smallest stalks. The thinner the stalk the more tender, the thick ones are usually tougher. 😉

    1. Great tip, Mandy! I usually go for ones about the width of my pinky finger. Usually the thick ones are the problem but I do occasionally see ones that are really overly skinny and sad looking!

  6. OMG – laughing so hard at the ‘bend and snap’ clip from Legally Blonde. We do that ALL the time! Whenever we drop something on the kitchen floor? Bend and snap! Caroline, we love salmon and I will give this a try soon! xx

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