4 Levels of Salmon: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

hi I'm Rihanna and I'm a level 1 chef I folks Lorenzo here and I'm a level 2 chef hi my name is Kelvin I'm from the Institute of Culinary Education and I've been a chef for 12 years I'm embarrassed to say that I don't cook often I'm all about fast and really getting in and out of the kitchen so this is good for me I eat salmon all the time my recipes a little different it's a little fancy smancy my presentation site is fried salmon skin I created this recipe after eating salmon for two weeks straight when I wanted to create a new dish I don't like eating fish and this one I enjoy eating very much alright we're getting real Rachael Ray in this joint and we're gonna start by prepping our veggies okay so we have wait am I allowed to reference Rachael Ray today I'm using purple skin potatoes these are fingerling potatoes you can find them at your local grocery store in the fingerling section cut it I'm gonna drop it into some water now that we have our potatoes ready it's time to get them cooking see you in 20 minutes and now I have a beautiful odd assortment of fingerlings let's start by prepping my baby back joint it's a little large typically babe actually my carrots are really tiny so I'm gonna help it out I don't want to engulf it with choice we just raid the potatoes in my mashed potatoes I like add a little bit of cream a little bit of butter and a lot of love I like using a food mill it's gonna really give the potatoes a nice little fine texture and add the potatoes right into my pot stir it together this is the consistency that we're looking for nice beautiful creamy as a matter of fact honestly in reality I just ripped the leaves of the bok choy I got cherry heirloom tomatoes the contrast in flavor gonna be really nice for our final presentation we're just gonna cut two at a time one time I saw on Pinterest that you can take a handful of these and slice them like that I sliced my hand open so we don't do that anymore I'm gonna score it right on top just making a little cross hatch from the throw it in the boiling water for about ten seconds we don't want to overcook the cherry tomatoes since we're gonna cook it one more time in the saute pan open them up so that these spices can kind of just soak in cut my finger already I can see the skin starting to come off now we're gonna fish him out into our ice bath that's gonna stop the cooking process so I'm gonna cook the tomatoes one more time you don't want to leave the tomatoes in there too long you don't want them to absorb any more water than they already have Pinterest has you out here thinking that you have a hack for everything but some things just need to be taken slow but if there's any level two three fours out there that have a different hack let me know because this is boring you can see skin is starting to come off which is exactly what we want I'll take my paring knife right where we scored it the skin is gonna come right off asparagus snap away so right now I have beautiful baby zucchini I like using baby zucchini because it doesn't take a long time to cook we are now going to zest this involves one lemon this is going to add some lemony zesty flavor to our asparagus garlic I'm gonna crush it I'm not gonna keep it whole because I wanted to incorporate into my baby bok choy and my julienne carrots all right let's get started here we can literally throw everything together can all go at the same time time to cook some vegetables I like using vegetable oil over extra virgin olive oil it has a higher smoking point a little bit of kosher salt a little bit of pepper so what we're going to do twice as thinly as I can let's just saute this through a lot of people make the mistake of again adding liquid to this the liquid from the bok choy will dissipate in the release so I'm gonna take all of these lemons that I so beautifully sliced and I'm going to put them in this bowl because again I think that the lemon is going to soak into the asparagus not sure if it happens but it looks nicely contained in this bowl the zucchinis danson you want to make sure I filled a little bit of color first I'm gonna look for a little bit of golden brown I don't want too much carmelization you don't want the babies if you need to be mushy you want to still have a little bit of a bite we're gonna take all of these chopped vegetables and we're going to scatter them so I have a little Hepper onion powder garlic powder dried rosemary I tend to over season things that's probably why the food comes out bad so you know I'm gonna add sesame seed oil soy sauce rice wine vinegar and all of the things that I read online that you're actually supposed to get more olive oil in your diet so I tend to overdo it I also have oysters sauce oyster sauce is the key but I am NOT adding the oyster sauce yet if I added the oyster sauce I'm gonna have a very sticky situation won't be able to saute this and now it's time to have the cherry tomatoes join the party and now my vegetables are ready so now I'm going to take the tomatoes and potatoes to the oven where they will roast for 10 minutes all right now it's time to add the one last ingredient and that is my oyster sauce that's about a tablespoon and a half and that is vegetables okay so now we're making the fun little additions to the recipe which are a marinade and a panko crunchy topping so we're gonna start with the marinade because it looks the fanciest we have about a half a cup of soy sauce and we're going to add half a cup of honey into it I will stop it with my finger very important step taste good all right turning on my little stove here whoops I keep turning the timer on sorry folks time to make the pineapple butter sauce I'm using pineapple juice I chose pineapple because leaves you want anymore that's when you know you got a homerun in this dish a couple tablespoons of oil nice and my little homage to you guys hello Emily shoutout to you ketchup now the pineapple juice has reduced exactly to where we want it we're gonna add a tablespoon of butter we'll let the butter swirl in just like that we have a pineapple butter sauce I'm going to now apple cider vinegar mustard soy sauce little bit of salt always a little bit of salt time for our citrus crust I'm gonna take half a stick of butter got to beat the butter a little bit just so I know who's boss we'll take one lemon this recipe is lemon intense then assess the entire lemon so we're gonna cut it in half get out all of the lemon juice there's a lot of careful technique here a lot of turning twisting I don't expect you all to catch on this just the first try so try to rewatch the video a few times to get the technique down we're going to pour it in here and gently whisk so it's basically a light sweet and sour sauce it's getting kicked in its own I actually don't need to make a slurry of cornstarch I did it once we start adding any liquid to the butter it starts to firm up a bit wha-wha-wha forgot the water and cornstarch to thicken it that's why it looks funny there you go folks there is my sweet and sour sauce for my salmon now we're adding some panko bread crumbs it can make you or salmon have a crunchy topping so we're adding this melted butter as I'm incorporating the butter to the panko I know I have enough when we're ready to be able to spread it thin have a little bit of wax paper here add a little bit of our butter another wax paper on top put a little bit of pressure exactly what we're looking for a nice beautiful citrus crust gonna pop this in the freezer for 10 minutes we'll be right back and this will make a beautiful crunchy topping for our salmon and this is the reason why we're here start the show here it is this salmon time have a nice fillet of or a salmon I'm gonna remove the skin we're not gonna saw which is gonna let the knife do its thing just like that we have a beautiful skin removed tuna do about 8 ounces for the salmon we're prepping the salmon with just some simple seasoning we've got garlic I'm probably gonna put a little bit too much on here onion powder ginger powder salt and flip it making sure that we're seasoning on both sides hello beautiful silvery skin I like frying up the skin now I am going to flour the skin side we're ready to cook some salmon and I'm using neutral oil because we're gonna add flavor you can never have too much olive oil so I'm gonna kind of drizzle it on we're only cooking the salmon for about 2 and 1/2 minutes on each side because we're still cooking it once we put the crust on top listen for that sizzle I want that right off the bat I wanted to see her with salmon it's always important to cook presentation side first that's where you're gonna have the most heat content I can always go longer on this side and go lighter when I flip it so in the end it'll somewhere be in-between anyway okay it's good I'm going to reintroduce my beautifully roasted veggies scooped placed magic this asparagus is now going to be placed across all of the vegetables now you might be wondering where did those beautifully Findley sliced lemons go here they are we're gonna take our marinade drizzle it on top it off with the panko bread crumbs and we're going to roast it up and it's going to be delicious ready to flip my salmon beautiful golden brown ain't got Umbach did I just say that that was my inner monologue you got time to add the aromatics we're gonna add our garlic rosemary and our thyme see opaque it's a different color it's almost like that pumpkin ish custardy color if the fish doesn't smell fishy it's pretty dang good fish all right I'm done one ringy-dingy to ringy-dingy there you have two perfect pieces of salmon to add our last flavor profile which is gonna be the first bite and that's that citrus crust so I got the citrus crust out of the freezer we're gonna cut a piece that's exactly equivalent to our salmon want to make sure that we cover the salmon completely because it's pretending to be our skin and once it goes into the broiler it's gonna wrap completely around the salmon and it's gonna create this beautiful texture all right guys this just came out of the oven this looks like quite a masterpiece I am impressed so let's start with my sauce pretty pretty pretty and that my baby bok choy with a julienne carrots that guys there's colors there's vibrancy looks like there's flavor hello salmon you look great finish it off with some citrus all right here we go I like using cilantro cuz it just reminds me of tropical flavors and I think of pineapple as a tropical flavor now we mix the cilantro with our beautiful pineapple butter sauce and I think we've got ourselves a beautiful plate of salmon that's it this is my salmon and here we have our citrus crusted salmon I'm afraid to try this because it looks really good and I don't want to get my hopes up lucious I'm Brown oh good it is not this see it's nice and just a nice combo these guys are working together pom pom pom one pallet says hello the other pile says thank you you get this burst of lemon the texture from the panko breadcrumbs if you don't like fish you'll be converted with this dish that kind of rhymed salmon is a medium popular fish that's very versatile in cooking let's see how each of our chefs made their salmon dishes Liana used a combination of fingerling potatoes cherry tomatoes and asparagus each ingredient requires different cooking times for proper doneness oil conducts heat well and gets very hot while also preventing water loss when baking oil also adds a richness to the flavor of the potatoes and the cherry tomatoes I'd rather over season something and it tastes good then to have wasted time wasted effort to have a unseasoned meal she cut her potatoes in half to cut the required cooking time down the cherry tomatoes burst when the water inside them turns to steam which creates some liquid in the baking pan Liana added her asparagus with the salmon because it cooks more quickly than the potatoes and the cherry tomatoes when you cook green vegetables for a longer time the chlorophyll which gives asparagus its bright green color eventually turns to a compound called feel for buyed which is more of an olive color and not very visually appealing Lorenzo served his salmon with baby bok choy and carrots which ties in nicely with his asian-inspired theme he used a flash fry method in an aluminum wok clean this wok I've ever seen in my life aluminum conducts heat very well so this type of pan heats very quickly mainly through conduction and convection as the heat travels from the heat source around the sides of the wok he used spicy red pepper flakes with fresh garlic soy sauce and oyster sauce which is derived by cooking moist earth which are high in glycogen that breaks down into glucose when cooked Calvin served his salmon with mashed purple potatoes this type of potato has anthocyanin pigments in the skin which make them purple this pigment is water-soluble and lightens in color as they're boiled he also sauteed baby zucchini with heirloom cherry tomatoes as a chef the hardest thing to do is make a dish exciting from beginning to end you're adding different flavor profiles it's gonna leave your palate excited heirloom tomatoes generally come from older cultivars and have various shapes colors and sizes he scored the top and the bottom and boil the tomatoes quickly this steam generator from water inside the tomato helps to easily remove the fibrous skin making tender Tomatoes Leana baked her salmon at a high heat for 15 to 20 minutes on a baking sheet with her vegetables salmon is a fatty fish so it can withstand higher temperatures without becoming dried out the rents are used a nonstick saute pan to pan fry his salmon lorenzo focused on keeping the skin very crunchy and cooked his salmon to a medium doneness so that the inside of his fillet was brighter in color and very tender due to the water that remained I'm just gonna let it go opaque a very short period of time because I don't like to overcook it and dry it out Calvin first seared his salmon without skin while it was searing he basted his salmon adding the lipid-soluble flavorings from the fresh rosemary thyme and garlic he finished by cooking in the oven briefly then added the lemon butter crust and broiled his salmon broiling is a radiant heat method where heat energy is transmitted by waves that vibrate at high frequency and travel rapidly through space Leanna's simple one-pound salmon dish relied on the colors of the potatoes cherry tomatoes and asparagus to complement the pinkish salmon the panko added textural appeal and rounded out her delicious salmon you guys thought I was loving one Lorenzo served his salmon skin side up he also added soy sauce spicy Dijon mustard and hot sesame oil which activate chemosensory receptors on our tongues to impart that hot spicy feeling we get from capsaicin or other spicy ingredients like hot sesame I like things little spicy a little high Kelvin's pineapple butter sauce was a wonderful sweet and fruity addition to his lemon flavoured salmon pineapple also contains bromelain which is a proteolytic enzyme so it helps to tenderize the fish as well it makes you dance that's when you know it's great our three chefs each put their own spin on their salmon recipe next time you're in the mood for a delicious and healthy fish we hope you'll enjoy these tips from our three chefs [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 3,326,235

Keywords: salmon recipe, make salmon, 4 levels of salmon, how to make salmon, how to cook salmon, homemade salmon recipe, expert salmon, restaurant salmon, professional salmon, salmon skin, crispy salmon, salmon vegetables, epicurious salmon, cook salmon, baked salmon, sauteed salmon, fried salmon, seared salmon, salmon dinner, perfect salmon, salmon tips, salmon tutorial, salmon step by step, salmon, salmon fish, fish recipe, best salmon, best fish, 4 levels, epicurious

Id: 1P55j9ub4es

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020