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February 21, 2009

A few months ago you said in one of your posts that if we had question you would be happy to answer them. . . When I cook fish it doesn’t come out very good, whats a good way to cook fish?  I have a hard time getting the skin off too, is there some kind of “secret” chef trick to this, restaurants always make it look so good. . .

Jeanne Hughes in Portland, OR 

I’m not sure about “secret chef tricks,” but I can try to shed some light on cooking fish . . . And maybe throw in a trick or two. . .

The First Timer’s Guide to Cooking fish in a Pan

   We will start by cooking a lite fish such as Halibut, and a fat fish such as a Salmon.  Lite fish cook up nice and flaky, while the fat fish tend to be meatier and more solid when they cook, like . . . Well, meat.

   Let’s start by adding some fat to our pan (butter in this case), so that our fish doesn’t stick, and then let the pan get hot.

   After the pan is hot, let’s add our fish.

Now that our fish is in the pan I would like to point one thing out.  I usually put the skin side down first.  For the pictures I have shown skin side up first, but only for demonstration, so that you can see the skin on the salmon.  When you try this, put your skin side down first.  Also, notice that I am using a non-stick pan to help the fish not stick.

Let it cook for a few minutes (2-3) one one side and then flip them on over.  What do you see?  Is the fish somewhat golden brown on that side?  If it is then you can say what I said . . . Awesome!  Nice color!  This is the color that you want when you flip your fishy over.  Did the fish stick and leave some remnant stuck to the pan?  If it did, you did not have enough oil/fat in the pan to prevent it from sticking (the non-stick pan makes a big difference too).  Once again, let the fish cook on the opposite side for about 2 to 3 minutes.

Now that we have cooked the fish on both sides, we will throw in a little “secret chef” trickery.  Flip the fish back over and having cooked the skin side for a few minutes, the skin should now just pull right off.  At this point you can flip the fish back over and get a little bit of brown color on the skin side (now that the skin is gone) if you would like.  If not, you just pull it out of the pan and let it sit for a minute and finish cooking.

 

Now check out that Halibut!  The color has gone from a somewhat translucent white to a nice deep white and is consistent throughout (meaning that the color is the same all the way through.  You don’t want the outside a deep white while the inside is still translucent).  The texture is just right, nice and flaky and ”flakes” into small chunks as it is cut into with a fork.  Now how about our Salmon?

It looked so good I decided to eat it.  The texture was nice and flaky, it had changed from a dark orange color to a nice pink throughout and I decided to try it out.  We paired it with some potatoes, asparagus, broccoli and then finished it with a nice Hollandaise . . . Move over Rachel Ray, we did all this in about 25 minutes . . . Anybody want to learn how to do this? 

Now, I had some left over fish, so I thought I would store it to use another day.

So as you can see from the pictures I simply wrapped the fish in some plastic wrap and placed a bag of ice over the top of it, before putting it in the refrigerator.  Why?  Fish comes from the water, so we store it with water.  If I had the same ability at home that I do at the restaurants, I would actually put ice all around the fish, but since I don’t have the same tools at home as I do the restaurants, I do what I can with what I have.

Hopefully that sheds some light on your fish cooking efforts.  Once again, if you have questions, all you have to do is ask. . .