First, check your fish for any pin bones. Those are the tiny bones along the thick side of the fish. Your salmon may not have any, but if you do simply remove with tweezers or your hands if you are dexterous and have petite fingers like that.

Brush both sides of the salmon with gin. Drink a little out of the bottle if you like.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar, salt, black pepper, lemon zest and tarragon.

Then, cover the salmon completely on both sides in the mixture by packing it on.

Wrap your salmon tightly with saran wrap. Cut a slit in one end where the fish juices can escape.

Now we have to refrigerate the lox for curing! I put mine in a roasting pan. Then weigh it down with a heavy object (I used a small cast iron pan) to promote those fish juices to flow (sorry I said fish juices.)

Now you want to tilt the salmon curing contraption so the fish juices drain to one side. I used a towel top to prop up one side of the pan.

After 24 hours check on your salmon. It should start looking like lox and some of the fish juices should be piling up.

Drain the fish juices and put the lox back for another 12 hours.

After 36 total hours unwrap the lox and wash it off well. The skin should peel off easily at this point. If it doesn’t, you can always filet it off with a sharp knife.

Now just cut off small pieces against the grain on an angle and you’ve got lox!

Serve with the above accouterments.