Can you “Marry Me” anything?

A number of “Marry Me” recipes, a protein draped in a creamy sun-dried tomato sauce (“Marry Me Chicken”; my colleague Alexa Weibel’s tomato beans, which readers are calling “Marry Me Beans”), made my editors and me wonder: Just because you can drench something in that dreamy ‘90s pink sauce, should you?

You should.

How else would you find out that crisp-skinned salmon is spectacular with “Marry Me” sauce?

Lindsay Funston’s Tuscan-style chicken recipe raked in millions of views after it was published on Delish.com in 2016 and found new life on TikTok years later. “Marry Me Salmon” is a fantastic riff, a fish dinner you can cook for yourself and the love of your life any day of the week. It’s also nothing new.

In 2023, Alyssa Rivers of The Recipe Critic blog published a version with lemon zest, which helpfully brightens fatty fishes, as did Hajar Larbah, who runs the blog Moribyan. As Larbah describes the salmon, it’s “so good it will make you say ‘Marry Me’ to whomever makes it for you!” Hers omits the sun-dried tomatoes but maintains the dish’s lush, creamy essence. There are others, too, that vary in ingredients, but all bear the title of “Marry Me.”

For weeks, I was on the hunt for one of those old-fashioned red-sauce-joint emulsions, light on the palate, almost brothy but rich. While eating as many pink sauces as I could out in the world, I realized that what makes the best ones stand out is simplicity, with nothing competing — and lots of yellow onion, sweet, mild and familiar. You could add garlic, but salmon isn’t chicken, so its sauce needs a lighter touch.

Chicken broth works, but bottled clam juice (a tip from my colleague Genevieve Ko), readily available in most grocery stores, gives you a clean red-sauce seafood taste. A splash of heavy cream takes you into blushed vodka-sauce territory. Sun-dried tomatoes make it “Marry Me.”

By pan-searing the fish, mostly on the skin side, in sun-dried tomato oil, then gently (and briefly) poaching the flesh side in the “Marry Me” sauce, you get shattering skin yielding to plush salmon. There’s something beautiful in how even the most simple treatment can bring out an ingredient’s best qualities.

No one told me that when I got down on a knee in August and asked my partner to marry me that nothing would change; there would still be dishes to do, bills to pay and laundry to sort. But having fit this dish into our busy lives time and again, I realized that marriage is the everyday parts, the parade of weeknight dinners over the occasional date night. “Marry Me” truly can mean anything, but above all, it’s when the ordinary becomes transcendent.

Marry Me Salmon

A take on Marry Me Chicken, this dish is the weeknight fish you cook for your future life partner. Perfectly seared salmon bathed in a creamy sun-dried tomato gravy is anchored by the familiar one-two punch of dried oregano and crushed red pepper. By cooking the fish mostly on the skin side, then gently poaching the flesh side in sauce, you get shattering skin yielding to plush salmon. Bottled clam juice, readily available at the grocery store, gives the creamy red sauce a seafood taste. Serve with crusty, fluffy Italian bread or your favorite pasta tossed with a dribble of oil from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes. — Eric Kim

Yield: 2 servings. Total time: 30 minutes.

Ingredients

2 salmon fillets, preferably skin-on (10 ounces total)

Kosher salt and black pepper

1/4 cup thinly sliced oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, plus 2 tablespoons oil from the jar

1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

1 teaspoon dried oregano, plus more to taste

1/2 to 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper, plus more to taste

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 (8-ounce) bottle clam juice (1 cup)

1/2 cup heavy cream

Fresh basil leaves, for serving (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Pat the salmon dry and lightly sprinkle salt and pepper all over.

2. Heat a medium nonstick or cast-iron skillet over medium-high, then add 1 tablespoon of oil from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

3. Sear the salmon skin side down until the skin is browned and crisp, and the flesh is opaque about three-quarters of the way up, 5 to 7 minutes. Reduce the heat if the skin starts to burn. Transfer to a plate skin side up. (The fish will finish cooking in the sauce later.)

4. Reduce the heat to medium. Add the onion to the skillet and season with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened considerably, 5 to 7 minutes.

5. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon sun-dried tomato oil to the skillet. Add the oregano and crushed red pepper, stirring for a few seconds to bloom them and open up their flavors. Add the tomato paste and stir frequently until a shade darker in color, about 3 minutes.

6. Add the clam juice and raise the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced by half, 4 to 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, add the cream and sun-dried tomatoes and cook, stirring constantly, until slightly reduced, about 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt, pepper, oregano and crushed red pepper as desired.

7. Return the salmon to the skillet flesh side down, without getting sauce on the crispy skin, then reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the salmon is cooked through, about 1 minute. It will continue to cook as it sits. To serve, top with basil leaves, if using.