Salmon fillets 101

if you're nervous about cooking fish salmon is a great fish to learn on because it's so forgiving salmon is good when it's cooked perfectly medium it's good when it's undercooked because after all it's good when it's totally raw and thanks to Salmons high fat content it's still pretty good when you overcook it it's very hard to ruin this fish I'm gonna give you a few basic ways of cooking it but first let's go shopping we'll be restricting ourselves to fillets and the first question is farmed versus wild here's farmed here's wild and you can tell by the color farmed salmon has a pale orange color that always reminds me of a creamsicle wild salmon has a more intense color this is sockeye salmon which of all the five major wild salmon species has the most reddish color it's like the inside of a blood orange farmed salmon flesh would be gray if farmers didn't feed them the pigment astaxanthin which gets the color closer to the real thing wild salmon get asked us Anthon naturally from the crustaceans they eat and they get way more of it the farmers skimp on it because it's expensive as a feed additive the other giveaway that this is farmed is the white ribbons running through the meat so that's the fat and farmed salmon usually has a higher fat content which you can see that's a good or a bad thing depending on what you want but one way in which wild salmon is in arguably superior is in the type of fat both of these fish have a mixture of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids if you eat a pretty standard Western diet like me that means you should probably be eating more omega-3s and less omega sixes and that's exactly what the wild salmon gives you farmed salmon has much more omega-6 proportionally which probably makes it less healthy for most people watching this we're gonna go with wild today and unless you live near the fishery and say Alaska your salmon is gonna be frozen it came to your grocery store frozen they thought it and put it in the fish case salmon harvest comes in all at once at one time of year so it has to be frozen that is just fine modern flash freezing is astoundingly good at preserving quality according to my own little classification system the filets come in three basic shapes depending on where they were cut from on the whole side of fish here's what I call the car shape see it's like a little hatchback beep-beep those are usually my favorite then you'll get some thinner more even pieces like these I call those flat pieces and then there's the tail piece which you could spot by its a per both of those pieces have their virtues too as you'll see fillets have been cut off the bone that's what makes them fillets but salmon fillets will still usually come with a few little pin bones that you need to take out you'll see them poking up and you can just yank them out with your fingers the fillet is naturally have a million pin bones in them the processors take them out but they usually miss a few understandably then there's the matter of the skin the scales have been removed so a lot of people eat the skin I'm not a huge fan but unless I needed skinless chunks for like a fish pie or something I would not try to cut the skin off at this stage it's vastly easier to remove the skin after the fish is cooked and let's cook I'm gonna start with a stainless steel pan not my favorite choice you'll see why medium heat a little salt and pepper and I love garlic powder I love it generally but I especially love it on salmon it goes perfectly and while it would burn at the temperatures at which you'd sear beef or pork it kind of Browns and goes toasty up the precise temperature at which I like to Brown salmon anyway so a big fan of garlic powder here little olive oil in the pan and you can see it shimmering there but it's not smoking much that temperature is perfect I like to cook my salmon most of the way on the flesh side a lot of people do the opposite they want to crisp the skin I usually don't eat the skin so I don't care and salmon flesh gets such a delicious crust on it if you let it brown slowly but thoroughly here's another reason salmon is easy it's got a window you just look at the side that cut cross-section I like to flip the fish when I can see from the color change that it's cooked halfway through at most but since I'm using a steel pan I've got to worry about sticking I don't want to flip this until the crust is set enough that it won't stick and break when it's time to flip and by the time I had the courage to do so yeah it was a hair burned and even then it's still stuck and got a little bit beat up I'm not a fan of sticky pans for fish fillets now I would normally just give this another minute or two on the skin I want to pull it when that window on the side still looks a hair raw at the very center but this I'm gonna deliberately overcook I'm waiting until that cross section has fully changed color and oops the skin stuck that's what I mean when I say the skin comes off way more easily after it's cooked some people love to eat that by the way it's worth a shot even if you're skeptical okay now this is what overcooked salmon looks like inside see how it kind of crumbles but here's the thing that's still pretty good you can get away with overcooking salmon a bit because the fat melts and compensates for the water loss that fish is still moist let's try again though and this time we'll use a Teflon pan this is certainly the easiest option if you're not feeling confident heat it's a medium a little olive oil this time I'm using the tail piece the tail pieces and the flat pieces are good because they're a pretty even thickness which means they'll cook evenly if you're into that I can tell that my heat is a little too low there it's not sizzling I think you want a mild sizzle with salmon at all times I'm looking in my fish window again and when I can see that the heat has moved almost halfway up I will flip and look how easy that was with a nonstick pan fish and eggs that's what these things are great for you can also see into the interior of the fish and there's little fissures on top visibly raw on the inside but this time I'm going to deliberately undercook it out it comes let it rest a second here you can see it flaking instead of crumbling it's warm but basically raw at the center my wife would call that undercooked I'd actually call it perfect that is delicious to me if there was bacteria on this thing it would be on the surface which we cooked them therefore sterilized the major pathogen concern on the interior of salmon is parasites which are killed by the freezing process so I'm good with this but this time let's try to nail it and I'll use my well seasoned cast iron pan this time this is an option if you don't want to use Teflon olive oil is shimmering but not yet smoking that's perfect and this time I'm cooking the car piece which is my favorite why is it my favorite because it's of uneven thickness I like rare salmon I like well-done salmon it's all good and this gets me a sampler of all of those tastes in one portion plus the thinnest part there that's from the belly which has proportionally more fat so it actually does well to be overcooked it kind of fries from the inside it's like this fish was evolved to be cooked you can see this still kind of stuck on me I'm not super confident with cast iron maybe you can do it better and then right after flipping something you can do is drop in some butter for basting I also like to squeeze in some lemon juice at this point it'll cook a bit which will mellow it slightly between that and the butter you end up getting something that tastes like a beurre blanc sauce and it took almost no work little basting with a spoon and when the salmon window on the side there still looks a little raw in the center I'll pull it out a little steamed broccoli on the side and that's all I need for dinner this is a very frequent weeknight meal in our house quick easy and good for you you can see the salmon is still a smooth and moist in the center there I would call this medium rare salmon I like it more rare but if I was cooking for other people this is what I'd guess most people want ok salmon also does great under the broiler what Brits call a grill unless it's a hugely thick fillet I think you want your broiler all the way hot I'm just gonna put oil in a cold oven safe pan grab one of my flat pieces smoosh it around and get it coated in oil a little bit of pepper but no salt you'll see why in a sec right underneath the hot broiler you could totally just do this with salt and pepper but I'm gonna summon the upside down bear and make a quick glaze of honey and soy sauce the soy sauce is salty give it an initial brushing and then back under excess honey is going to run off and burn that's why we don't put this on at first give it a second rushing and after 5 minutes total I can see little spaces starting to open up between the flakes of meat that means this is cooked no point in flipping when you're doing it under the broiler that is super easy and tasty and lastly I will give you a recipe that I'm pretty sure I was drunk when I came up with I'm not proud of it but it's good in that it's a great way of using leftover mashed potatoes you want to heat them up in the microwave so they'll be soft and spreadable it's nice if you have some fresh herb to mix in there I'm using dill a classic flavor with salmon just tearing a bunch of that in there this mash already has butter and milk and salt and pepper in it pretty standard mashed potato and then like I said I'm not proud of this dish a big handful of shredded cheese whatever kind you got you could use parmesan it obviously tastes good but it also helps to bind this all together into a solid crust for the fish a little oil in an oven-safe pan I'm not greasing the flesh side because I want it to be sticky not slippery you should season it with some salt I honestly forgot to do that when I shot this it needs its own salt not just the salt from the mash and I'm just pressing a thin layer of cheesy mash over that salmon I'm leaving myself an exposed chunk so that I can watch it for doneness under my all the way hot broiler a flat piece of salmon is better for this if it was a car piece the shorter end would be farther from the broiler and wouldn't get enough color when the crust is brown and again I can see the flakes of the salmon just starting to open up from each other out this comes this totally looks like something you'd get at a fast casual family chain restaurant but it's honestly kind of great I mean no disrespect to this beautiful fish provided to me by the sponsor of this video Bristol Bay sockeye salmon about 8,000 small boat fishermen in Bristol Bay Alaska they sent me the fish and the goober outfit to go with it how do I look Bristol Bay is home to the largest and most sustainable wild salmon run on the planet over 90 percent of the wild salmon caught in the u.s. comes from Alaska and 75% of the wild Sokka I caught in Alaska comes from Bristol Bay is delicious and super good for you remember wild salmon has that high omega-3 to omega-6 ratio and it's naturally full of astaxanthin which has its own potential health benefits you can learn more and find Bristol Bay sockeye salmon near you at the links in the description and seriously if you're scared of cooking fish gives Sam and a try you almost can't screw it up

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,341,948

Rating: 4.9076071 out of 5

Keywords: how to cook salmon, how to cook, salmon fillet, how to cook salmon in a pan, how to cook salmon on the stove, how to cook salmon fillet in a pan, salmon fillet cooking, wild salmon, wild salmon vs farmed salmon, wild salmon recipe, wild salmon cooking, farmed salmon vs wild salmon, farmed salmon color, farmed salmon vs wild salmon color, basic salmon recipe, basic salmon, easy salmon recipe, easy salmon recipe pan, easy salmon dinner, astaxanthin, wild alaskan salmon recipe

Id: 7A-4-S_k_rk

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/GeneBoatman]

Since it's so empty here, I'll start the conversation. Any thoughts on the albumin (protein) escaping the salmon and how to avoid it?