Hot Honey King Salmon Bowl with Roasted Sweet Potato
- by SEATOPIA
Kayla Dunham × Seatopia
Recipe by Kayla Dunham
Creator, community builder, and weeknight cook · Partnerships at Spotify
“Leave it better than you found it” · Community at @westsidecoastalclub · Los Angeles
This is what a weeknight looks like at Kayla Dunham’s house: one protein, a pile of vegetables, and nothing that takes longer than the air fryer takes to preheat. Seatopia King Salmon gets sea salt, cracked black pepper, and red chili flakes, then a generous drizzle of hot honey and a lemon slice on top. Eight to ten minutes at 400°F and the honey caramelizes into a lacquered, faintly spicy crust.
Underneath it: a bed of spinach, air-fried Japanese sweet potato rounds, and a cucumber-and-tomato salad dressed with nothing but olive oil, lemon, salt, and pepper. Total time is about 25 minutes, and most of that is the sweet potato cooking while you slice everything else.
We built it around Seatopia King Salmon from Ora King in New Zealand — 8.5 oz skin-on, sushi-grade portions, lab tested to the Seatopia Standard™ for mercury, microplastics, and nutrient density. It is a rich, high-fat fillet, which is exactly what you want under honey and heat.
Kayla is a creator and community builder in Los Angeles who works in partnerships at Spotify and organizes with Westside Coastal Club. The whole ethos is leave it better than you found it — which is a pretty good description of how we think about sourcing fish, too.
At a glance
About 25 minutes
Roughly 15 minutes of prep and 10 minutes of cooking. Start the sweet potato first and everything else — salmon, salad, greens — happens while it roasts.
Serves 2
Two King Salmon portions, one medium Japanese sweet potato, one Persian cucumber, a cup of cherry tomatoes. Scale it straight up for four; nothing needs recalculating.
400°F for 8–10 minutes
Air fryer, no flipping, no pan to scrub. The honey does the work — it caramelizes at the edges while the inside stays translucent and soft.
Five things on the fish
Hot honey, red chili flakes, sea salt, cracked black pepper, lemon. There is no marinade, no sauce to whisk, and nothing to thicken.
Four things on the plate
There is no recipe to memorize here, just a shape: something green, something hot and glazed, something roasted, something raw and acidic. Learn the four and you can rebuild this bowl out of whatever the fridge is holding.
1. A bed of greens
Two cups of baby spinach, raw and undressed. The hot salmon wilts it just enough on contact, and the warm honey drips down and dresses it for you.
2. Hot honey King Salmon
Patted dry, seasoned hard with salt, pepper, and chili flakes, drizzled with hot honey and topped with a lemon slice. Air fried until the top lacquers and the edges char.
3. Air fryer sweet potato
A Japanese sweet potato in thick rounds, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Purple skin, pale gold inside, drier and sweeter than an orange sweet potato.
4. Cucumber and tomato
Sliced Persian cucumber and halved cherry tomatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepper. This is the acid and the crunch, and it is what keeps the honey from taking over.
Forty-five seconds with Kayla
From the tide pools to the table
The whole thing, start to finish — a morning at the tide pools, the King Salmon box coming out of the freezer, and lunch on the couch about twenty-five minutes later. Sound on if you want it.
- 0:02 Low tide on the Westside — leave it better than you found it
- 0:12 The King Salmon portion, lab numbers printed right on the pack
- 0:17 Sea salt, cracked pepper, chili flakes, hot honey
- 0:22 Ten minutes at 400°F and the honey lacquers over
- 0:37 Built, carried to the couch, gone
Hot Honey King Salmon Bowl
SEATOPIA
2
15 minutes
25 minutes
This Hot Honey King Salmon Bowl is a quick and wholesome meal packed with nutritious ingredients. Featuring succulent Seatopia King Salmon, fresh vegetables, and roasted sweet potatoes, it's a colorful and satisfying dish that can be prepared in under 30 minutes.
Ingredients
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2 King Salmon portions, patted dry
Hot honey, to taste
Red chili flakes
Sea salt
Freshly cracked black pepper
Lemon slices
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2 cups fresh baby spinach
1 Persian cucumber sliced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 medium Japanese sweet potato, sliced into rounds
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Freshly cracked black pepper
Lemon wedges, for serving
Directions
Pre-Step: Please ensure you take your King Salmon files out of the freezer approximately 1 hour prior to preparing.
Slice the sweet potato into rounds and toss with olive oil, sea salt and black pepper. Roast or air fry until tender and golden around the edges.
Pat the King Salmon dry and season with sea salt, black pepper and red chili flakes. Drizzle generously with honey and top with a fresh lemon slice. Air fry at 400°F for 8–10 minutes, or until cooked to your preferred doneness and caramelized on top.
Slice the cucumber and halve the cherry tomatoes. Toss together with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper.
Add a bed of fresh spinach to each bowl and layer in the seasoned cucumber and tomatoes and roasted sweet potato. Top with the hot honey King Salmon and finish with a fresh squeeze of lemon.
Shop the salmon in this bowl
Developed with Seatopia King Salmon — 8.5 oz skin-on, sushi-grade Ora King portions rich enough to stand up to hot honey. Alpine King and Atlantic Salmon work under the same treatment; just pull them a minute or two earlier, and a digital thermometer removes the guesswork entirely.
Vendor:SEATOPIA
$26.17
/serving
Unapologetically rich and velvety—Ōra King salmon, the gold standard for celebratory seafood
Vendor:MT. COOK ALPINE SALMON
$25.75
/serving
All hail the mountain king salmon—royally perfect, raw or roasted
Vendor:SEATOPIA
$225.00
Rich flavor carrying oceanic depth and gentle sweetness across the palate. Contains a selection of King, Atlantic, and Steelhead.
Vendor:makesy®
$29.95
The 25-minute game plan
One pre-step, and it matters: pull the King Salmon out of the freezer the night before and thaw it in the refrigerator, or give it about an hour on the counter before you cook. After that, work in this order and everything lands hot at once.
Minute 0
Sweet potato goes in first
Slice one medium Japanese sweet potato into thick rounds — about ½ inch, so they stay creamy in the middle. Toss with olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper, then roast or air fry until tender and golden at the edges, roughly 15 minutes at 400°F. It is the longest-cooking thing on the plate, so it starts alone.
Minute 5
Season the King Salmon
Pat both portions completely dry — this is the one step people skip and the one that decides whether the honey caramelizes or steams. Season with sea salt, cracked black pepper, and red chili flakes, drizzle generously with hot honey, and lay a thin lemon slice on top of each fillet.
Minute 10
Dress the cucumber and tomatoes
Slice a Persian cucumber into coins and halve a cup of cherry tomatoes. Toss with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and freshly cracked black pepper. Let it sit while the salmon cooks — the salt pulls juice out of the tomatoes and it becomes its own dressing.
Minute 15
Air fry the salmon, then build
Air fry at 400°F for 8–10 minutes, until the top is caramelized and the fish flakes at the thin end. Lay a bed of spinach in each bowl, add the cucumber, tomatoes, and sweet potato rounds, and set the salmon on top. Finish with a hard squeeze of lemon.
Air fryer, oven, or grill
Kayla makes this in the air fryer, and that is the version we would cook first. All three work — the only real difference is when the honey goes on, because sugar over direct flame turns bitter fast.
| Air fryer | Oven | Grill or plancha | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature | 400°F | 400°F | Medium-high, direct heat |
| Time for an 8.5 oz portion | 8–10 minutes | 12–14 minutes | 4–5 min skin down, 2–3 after the flip |
| When the honey goes on | Before it goes in | Before it goes in | Last 2 minutes only — it burns over live fire |
| What you get | Deepest caramelization, crispest edges | Most even and most forgiving | Char on the skin and a little smoke |
| Best for | Two portions on a weeknight | Doubling the recipe for four | When the grill is already lit |
Prep the sides, cook the fish fresh
The sweet potato rounds keep 4 days refrigerated and reheat beautifully in the air fryer — 3 minutes at 375°F and they crisp back up. The cucumber and tomato salad is best on days one and two before the cucumber starts to weep. Spinach, obviously, keeps as long as the bag says.
The salmon is the part worth cooking fresh, because 10 minutes is not much of a shortcut to save. That said, leftovers are genuinely good cold the next day — flake them over the same salad and skip the reheat entirely.
Leave it better than you found it
Kayla’s motto is the reason this collaboration made sense. Every Seatopia portion ships with a Certificate of Analysis, and the King Salmon in this bowl is third-party lab tested: mercury at 0.017 ppm — well under the 0.1 ppm ceiling of the Seatopia Standard — and no detectable microplastics across all six polymers screened.
One 8.5 oz portion carries 3,434 mg of marine-derived omega-3s — 1,142 mg EPA and 2,292 mg DHA, about 172% of a daily omega-3 target — plus 47 g of protein, 49 mcg of vitamin D, and around 64 mcg of selenium. Those numbers are printed on the pack itself; you can watch Kayla read them off the label in the video above. Ora King is raised in the cold open water of New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds, and you can read exactly how we test it on our testing commitment page.
Questions cooks actually ask about this bowl
Which hot honey should I use?
Kayla uses a bottled hot honey, and any chili-infused honey from the grocery store will do. To make your own, warm ¼ cup of honey with ½ teaspoon of red chili flakes and a pinch of salt for two minutes, then let it sit off the heat for ten. Because the honey is doing the caramelizing here, a runnier one spreads better than a thick, crystallized jar.
Air fryer or oven — does it matter?
The air fryer gets you deeper caramelization in less time: 8–10 minutes at 400°F versus 12–14 minutes in the oven at the same temperature. The oven is more forgiving and easier when you are cooking four portions. On a grill, hold the honey until the last two minutes or the sugar will scorch. See the comparison table above.
What internal temperature should King Salmon hit?
Pull it at about 130°F at the thickest point. Carryover heat carries it up while it rests for 3–5 minutes, which leaves a King Salmon fillet silky rather than chalky — and this is a high-fat fish, so there is real room for error. Full detail in our guide to salmon internal temp.
What is a Japanese sweet potato, and can I substitute?
Purple-skinned with pale gold flesh, drier and nuttier than the orange kind, and it crisps at the edges instead of going soft. A regular orange sweet potato works — cut the rounds a little thicker and expect a wetter, sweeter result. Delicata squash or baby potatoes both slot in cleanly too.
Will the spinach wilt into a mess?
Only in the good way. Lay the spinach down cold and undressed and set the hot salmon directly on top — it collapses just enough while the warm honey and the salmon fat run down and dress it. If you would rather keep the greens fully crisp, use arugula instead — that is what Kayla builds hers on in the video, with shaved parmesan and a few slices of avocado alongside.
How do I defrost Seatopia King Salmon?
Best result: move it to the refrigerator the night before, still wrapped, and let it thaw slowly. If you forgot, take it out about an hour before you cook, or drop the vacuum-sealed portion into a bowl of cold water for 30–60 minutes. Never thaw at room temperature for hours or in the microwave.
More clean seafood bowls to cook this week
Loved this one? There is more where it came from. Every Seatopia box also includes a FREE virtual cooking class, where we walk through glazes, temps, and knife work live.
