This Loopy Way To Cook Salmon Actually Works – But Should You Do It?

When folks talk about poaching as an overlooked salmon cooking technique, we've never wondered if they were thinking about the dishwasher. So-called "dishwasher salmon," which is exactly what it sounds like — one or more salmon filets cooked by the high heat and agitating spray of your dishwasher — is actually something that some folks do. It could be because it's arguably cool and novel; it could be that the oven is otherwise occupied. Here's the thing that's actually coo-coo kachoo: you can, technically, cook salmon successfully in the dishwasher. 

Well, that depends on your definition of "success." Some folks really like the tenderness and flakiness of the resulting fish. The method involves enveloping raw salmon with butter or oil in an aluminum foil pouch, likely with seasonings like herbs and spices. While some intrepid dishwasher cooks will dedicate a separate cycle to their dinner, others will multitask and cook the salmon over a load of dirty dishes.

The better question here is whether you should cook salmon in your dishwasher, and that answer, for our money, is "no." For one, dishwasher manufacturers don't appropriately vet their appliances for cooking. While an oven is meant to bring food up to a safe temperature for consumption, that's not the purpose of a dishwasher ... meaning it might fail the mission. Likewise, there's no way to control temperature in a dishwasher, even though chefs argue over the "right" end temp for salmon. Just to make matters more dire, if you have a mishap with your experiment, you risk fish juices exploding all over your dishwasher, leading to awful smells and a sanitation nightmare that would require disinfecting the entire shebang.

On Reddit, an image of dishwasher salmon was disparagingly referred to as an example of "[s]h*t Americans do," with plenty of comments expressing incredulity over the method, which was compared to other outlandish culinary gimmicks like frying steak on a car engine. "It's like cooking sous vide in that you cook it at low sub-boiling temperatures over a long period of time," one commenter explained. "I'm told that if you put enough layers of tinfoil in and pack it tightly enough, you can even run your dishes with detergent and everything while you do it, but personally I wouldn't want to risk ruining salmon with soap."

Elsewhere on the site, a commenter with experience in the matter elaborated on some of the pitfalls: "I've tried it for the heck of it. It was honestly delicious, very tender salmon, but it's by no means a practical [...] recipe. I don't see myself making it again!" Meanwhile, yet another Redditor summed things up nicely: "Cooking things in weird ways such as toasters, dishwashers, dryers etc is going to be difficult and inconsistent. If you are a beginner, stick to conventional methods. It will be a lot less frustrating for you. These weird cooking hack videos are made to get clicks. Not to share knowledge."

Sometimes in life, you encounter an idea so nifty you don't necessarily stop to think if it's practical. "Cool" and "realistic" don't completely overlap, after all. While cooking salmon on your dishwasher rack may sound impressive — and it might even work if you do things perfectly — we can't recommend it in good conscience.