Every Way to Cook Salmon (43 Methods) | Bon Appétit

Hi

every

one, I'm Emil Stanek, Editor-at-Large at Bon Appetit, and these are pretty much all the ways to

cook

salmon

. There are a large number of fish in the sea. There are big and small fish. Red fish and blue fish. But today we are. We'll take a closer look at a very special fish, in particular

salmon

- specifically, we'll work with Aurra king salmon, a sustainably farmed variety that has firm, super rich and really very versatile meat, and we'll

cook

it in all the ways we can. we want I can think of sashimi, well this raw preparation is as simple as it comes, we have our salmon fillet, we will remove the skin and then we will cut our fish into nice, clean small pieces, done, salmon sashimi. so this is just salmon, nothing more hmm, the salmon is so good that you are really tasting all that fat, it is really meaty, it has a clean flavor and it is extremely tender.

It's hard to imagine cooking it when it's so delicious this way ceviche, okay, we're going to remove the skin again because this skin will be tough if it's not cooked, we're going to cut our salmon into 1/4 inch dice, we hit it with a little of salt and then we squeeze the juice of this lemon over it, we will let it rest for a few minutes. before tasting to let the citrus acid cook the salmon. Wow, you can see the colors change a little, it's the acid interacting with the protein mmm, the texture is definitely firmer than sashimi, not the best fish for the job to chase.

It is usually made with a leaner or flakier fish, but it is still a very tasty cured salmon. We have brown sugar. We have salt. We have some dill. We'll mix it all together and then package it. the salmon and wrap it very well and then weigh it with this pan and put it in the refrigerator to cure. Now that it's been sitting for a couple of days, let's unpack our salmon, it's kind of a sticky mess. cut a few thin slices of homemade gravlax, it has darkened a little and become a little matte thanks to the salt in the sugar cure mmm, it is delicious, huge, sweet and salty, incredibly silky texture like salmon smoked without grilled smoked salmon you don't get much more.

Simpler than this folks, we'll season our fish with both sides of salt, add a little oil to our super hot pan, and then gently place our fish here skin side down. We'll use a fish spatula to apply some light. Press to prevent the skin from curling and then let it cook on the skin side about 90% of the time and then turn it over just to kiss the other side. Damn, tada braised salmon, that skin looks crispy, you can actually hear it crunch when you cut into it, the inside is beautiful, barely cooked mmm, it's moist and juicy, nothing special, just, delicious, perfectly cooked, salmon, salmon cold, okay, similar but totally different, we're going to season our fish on both sides.

Place some oil in this room. pan to appropriate temperature, place the fish skin side down and increase the heat this way, the fish will cook a little more slowly as the pan heats up and the fat on the skin will gradually melt and brown, turn it over for just a second and it will be ready. Wow, the skin looks nice and crispy, but not as crispy as our hot skillet method. The inside looks perfect mmm, it's almost as good as our hot salmon. This skin is my only complaint. Fried salmon this time we are going to season our salmon.

Dredge it in a little flour, oil, our hot pan and place the fish skin side down. We're going to slide a few tablespoons of butter in here, turn the fish over and then drizzle it a little with the foamy butter while you're finishing mmm, that smells really good. the steak took on color much faster than our other pan

methods

and that's because of the flour and browned butter and yes the inside is a little raw but if we left it in the pan it would have burned mmm mmm still tasty Even though it's very strange, but at the end of the day I don't think the flour helped our cause.

Salmon burger. We will remove the skin and cut it into pieces. We'll take a third and process it. a paste that will act as a binder, then we will pulse the rest of the fish so that it is still somewhat thick, we will scrape it into a bowl, we will add a little mayonnaise and a little salt and then we will shape it and let it cool so that it hardens. Now that a few hours have passed we are going to lightly flour the rice, put a little oil in the pan and brown it carefully on both sides here comes the beautiful flip, the outside looks very golden and crispy thanks to the flour and the inside It looks tender hmm Oh, it's quite tasty, but the texture leaves a lot to be desired.

This could be a great way to prepare some cheap or even canned salmon. This seems like a missed opportunity. You know, let's go out and get some fresh air. all of these have already been salted and oiled, we have a whole fillet that we are going to place skin side down here, some cubes of salmon that we have skewered on skewers here and here we have a soaked in preheated cedar planking that we are going to put another fillet here , we'll just remove them when they're ready. grilled salmon, so grilling salmon can be a little tricky, it's fatty, which causes flare-ups, but it's also delicate, so it's hard to move.

A lot, this steak definitely has more char than we wanted and the skin is burnt on the inside, yes it is almost raw, mmm yes this is not ideal, the burnt pieces have a bitter sodium taste and the inside just gets hot When roasted, it can be a great way to cook salmon. but we couldn't nail this one, it's a cedar plank salmon so this cedar plank acted as a barrier between the intense heat of the grill and the fish and we hope the wood gives it some kind of flavor here's the skin . still totally soft and not browning, we have a nice medium to medium cooked interior mmm, not bad, but I don't get much wood flavor, it definitely prevented the flare ups, but didn't add much either, it seems. more of a gimmick than anything else salmon skewers, okay we got some good grill marks but not a lot of caramelization on the outside, the inside is definitely on the more well cooked side hmm, pretty tasty, not as juicy as I would like these smaller pieces.

They are much easier to overcook than a whole steak and we couldn't cook them long enough to get much color. They would be better with some type of glaze to speed up the browning process. Salmon roasting basket. We have our grilling basket. We've got our salmon oiled and salted, we're going to put it here, lock it, and then we're going to put it on our hot grill. The good thing about this device is that it makes it easier to move the salmon. flip it over after a couple of minutes and that's it, you know, I'm pretty disappointed by the color we have here.

The basket protected the skin, but perhaps too much. The color is very well done. Hmm, well, but not much happens. It's probably better with a larger piece of fish. Let's go back inside and make some pickled salmon. We have our skinless steak right here and we're going to cut it into some small pieces and put them in this jar. We will then pour a hot mixture of vinegar, salt and sugar on top before screwing on the lid and letting it hang for a few hours in the refrigerator so the color has changed significantly. It's very flaky but doesn't feel dry and smells. really vinegary mmm mmm mmm very spicy and sweet it's definitely a stronger flavor so if fishy things aren't your thing it's not for you but I love canned salmon urban farming time let's cut our fillet into six pieces and layer them in this jar. with a little salt and a splash of vinegar and screw the lid on tight, then we'll load it into this pressure canner, set it to high pressure and turn on the heat, okay, time to depressurize it now that it's cooked, depressurized and cooled. we can open it up and that's canned salmon as you can see the fish is completely submerged in liquid we didn't add any of that it's just salmon juice it's definitely sealed which means we did it right yes these pieces of salmon They are fully cooked hmm You know, it's not bad, it's just a little dry, it has the texture of canned tuna.

I missed the moisture, but if I had a ton of salmon, I didn't know what to do with it, it would be a pretty efficient way to preserve it. stable poached salmon, we're going to season it on both sides, we're going to open up our poached fish that's full of gently boiling fish broth, we're going to put our fillet in and we're going to cover it now that it's ready, we're going to lift this base and voila, poached salmon, it's worth noting. that this gadget is really designed for a whole fish, it makes it easier to cook

every

thing gently and then take it out completely intact, but our fillet feels great even without any brownie to speak of, oh, it crumbles very easily, it has a super juicy.

YUM salmon in a coffee maker You say you are in a hotel room and you want to cook a piece of salmon but you have nothing to cook it with. You have a coffee maker. We're going to drop our steak into this jar with a pinch of salt. Let's fill the container with water and turn this bad boy on, well, that's a coffee pot full of salmon and water, okay, first try this liquid. Yeah, I don't think he'd ever want to make coffee here. Again, the salmon is flaking very well. You know what's not terrible? And although it lost some flavor in the water, it's still a pretty tasty salmon rillette.

We're starting with cold poached salmon and we're going to shred it in this food processor. add a little bit of mayonnaise, a little bit of lemon juice, a pinch of salt and then we'll pulse it just enough to break up the salmon. Yes, I know what you're thinking, it looks like cat food. Sam is making a riad for everyone, so this would obviously be nicer. if we put it in a small jar and garnish it with chives or something it just looks pretty gnarly mmm it's actually really delicious the lemon adds a nice balance to all that richness Sam and the ice cream, hold on to your butts people.

First we are going to make salmon ice cream. First we need to make our ice cream base. We will add cream, milk and butter to this saucepan and bring it to medium heat while it works. We have a little bit of egg yolks, sugar and a pinch of salt and we're going to beat them until they're light and fluffy now that our dairy is hot we're going to add little by little to our eggs to temper them now we're going to pour them into this blender add about 1/ 3 of our poached salmon fillet and reserve the rest to cook later mmm, how appetizing, we're going to transfer this back to our saucepan, cook it until it's thick and then transfer it back to this bowl, cover it with plastic. wrap it up and chill it until it's really cold, we're going to pour it into this ice cream maker and let it break up now that it's almost done, we're going to add our shredded salmon for texture I guess, and now that it's ready, let's put it in a mold to bread and let it freeze completely until it is very hard, so now our ice cream is completely frozen in pieces.

Ted, here we have the fishiest ice cream ever. I mean, it looks good, like it could be something delicious like strawberry and not salmon, some chunks in there hmm, you know that from the beginning, it just tastes like really good ice cream with a distinctly fishy aftertaste. It's like eating ice cream while feeding your cat steamed salmon. Let's season our steak. Open this bad boy and place our salmon on a little piece of parchment just to keep it from sticking well, it's been about 4 minutes without the lid, take out our beautiful piece of steamed salmon so it doesn't brown here, which is to be expected, the skin looks the same as when it was raw cutting into it we have a nice silky medium cooked there mmm very simple not much to do but this would be delicious in a bowl of rice or something with a sauce assertive boiled salmon we have our pot of hot water here Let's turn up the heat, give it a good pinch of salt, slide our fillet in there and close the lid, and that, my friends, is boiled salmon, so compared to our other wet cooking

methods

, this one is definitely the least delicate it actually looks. pretty well cooked inside, not over done hmm, I don't hate it but it would be very easy to overcook it this way if I'm cooking salmon water, I'm going to poach it or steam it, I'm sure you know, some fish here , come on.

Back outside the campfire salmon 3 ways we have a campfire we have two salmon fillets that we wrap well and clay we have a salmon fillet that we wrap in a banana leaf we are going to place it on top of this hot rock and last but not least Importantly, we have two salmon fillets that for some reason we have wrapped in wet moss and we are going to put them in here, damn, this fire is hot. I'll take them out when they're ready, okay, the banana leaf is ready. The moss is ready. Clay is hard so I guess this one is made too.

Salmon cooked with clay, so the idea here was for the clay to harden to createa protective layer and definitely hardened, let's break this, I hope this clay is not poisonous. Wow, it didn't stick to the salmon as much as I thought it would, just the skin, so we used two fillets that we could have skin on both sides of the inside of this salmon. it's really pretty hmm honestly it tastes like well cooked salmon but nothing special it seems more like a party trick than anything else banana leaves salmon it doesn't look bad even though it was right on that hot rock it doesn't have the crispy skin.

It's just a little steamed which is great, it's definitely rarer mmm it tastes like steamed salmon with a little bit of vegetal flavor coming from the leaf, just a hint of smoke. I tried this again moss covered salmon, it looks pretty scaryTo be honest, I'm not sure if the moss was supposed to burn, but it did. It's hard to find the best way to open it. Alright. There are a lot of strange parts here. Surprisingly, it's not as horrible inside as I thought. uneven mmm, tastes a bit like bernie even though he didn't get any color, this wasn't as bad as i thought but it's a pretty scary way to cook salmon.

Things are getting a little weird here, let's get back to the kitchen fried salmon time to fry let's season this fillet and place it in 360 degree oil and let it do its job, take it out to drain a little more salt fried salmon the skin is nice, crispy and kind of formed crust all the way around, which is cold, the inside is on the more cooked side, but it's still crumbling nicely hmm, it's like the juice has been left behind stuck in there, yes, it's a little greasy and frying it is quite a pain, but it's definitely not a bad way. to cook salmon beer battered salmon we are going to make a quick beer batter we have some all purpose flour we are seasoning with salt we are going to open this beer mmm we are going to add our beer and beat it until it is the consistency of pancake batter, we're going to season our fish, put it in the batter and then straight into the hot oil, ooh, crispy, this crust is beautiful, crispy and light, it just breaks apart and the fish inside looks so pretty mmm, I love this. the dough is crispy and flaky and perfect fish fingers, okay, we're going to cut this fillet into four pieces, we're going to beat these egg whites until they're nice and foamy, then we're going to season our fish, we're going to dredge them in a little bit of flour. then in the egg whites and then in some breadcrumbs, we will repeat with the rest of the pieces and then we will drop the basket.

Look at those salmon sticks, so this layer of breadcrumbs is denser than the dough, it's a little bit lower profile for sure. but it's still very crispy. A totally different gastronomic experience than battered fish, but it is still juicy and delicious. All that greasy goodness was trapped inside a real step up from the freezer aisle. Fish sticks. Salmon fryer. We have a deep fryer. Place it here with the skin. This is supposedly as good as frying, but I suspect the skin is disappointingly flabby, looks like a bit of melted fat and there's a hint of browning around the edges hmm, yes, it's totally fine with air frying.

We don't add anything to this equation, why take out r2d2 when you can cook it in a pan with salmon skin chips? Okay, we've skinned a bunch of these salmon fillets, but that doesn't mean we have to throw them away. In total, we're going to take these pieces of skin and put them in the hot oil to make them crispy a little bit of salt and we have salmon skin chips, these are great, they have the texture of a pork rind or something mmm. Super crispy mild fish flavor is like isolating the best part of a crispy salmon fillet vacuum salmon we will use our vacuum sealer to suck out all the air and seal it in there, this will keep the water at a constant temperature of 115 degrees for about 40 minutes we'll take it out of this bag, very delicate, now leave it very dry and then brown it in a very hot pan for about a minute on each side, that crust is quite crispy but not as crispy as our straight one.

Honestly, the inside is beautiful, although mmm, how cute, the skin is very brown inside, it's almost custard. I'm very happy with this result, but honestly, it's pretty messy and definitely no better than, in my opinion, salmon jerky. We're going to cut our salmon into quarter inch thick slices, lots of salt, and slide it into this dehydrator for about 18 hours at 158 ​​degrees, it smells like salmon in here, yes, it looks like jerky, okay, it's pretty flexible and flaky. easily, definitely not. as tough as jerky because it's a lot greasier mmm, it's very tasty, very salty, definitely a little dry again.

This would be a great way to preserve salmon if you caught too much to eat in a week, but otherwise it's not that delicious. Since some of our other methods dry out our salmon, we're going to season this fish a little on all sides. We have our hair dryer on high heat. I'm actually more nervous about whether this works or not. Not really. I like the idea of ​​people putting something so close to their head that it can cook their scalp. Okay, I guess the skin isn't crispy and the inside is pretty raw, mmm good, but you know, it heats up to the center and the hair doesn't taste bad here let's go back outside smoked salmon this salmon has been cured with salt and sugar for about 24 hours we'll open our smoker slide the fish and skin down and let it smoke for about an hour and a half whoo that's smoked it's done so the outside darkens a little and it smells amazing wow there's definitely a lot of contrast between the slightly chewy outside and this really juicy inside mmm so moist the flavor is exceptional strong crackers YUM Sears all salmon we've got our Sears which is basically a modified blowtorch and we're going to cook this salmon a little bit all over so it's cooked on the outside and completely raw on the inside, much like you would with Japanese-style Potocki.

It was made quickly so the skin was crispy and barely opaque on all sides, when you cut into it totally raw it's still cold actually which is intentional, mmm yes it's tasty and would be even better sliced ​​and served with a sauce of Honestly, I prefer straight sashimi, but if you're squeamish about completely raw fish, this is a good way to eat salmon on a stick, so our campfire here is nice and hot, we have a piece of salmon that fit into this split stick and we're going to hold this here turning it from time to time so that the smoke and the heat can cook our fish gradually.

This is going to take a while. Well, that seems done to me, it definitely smells like smoke, yes. cooked quite unevenly due to the way certain parts were insulated by the wood on the outside a little dry on the sides undercooked but the flavor is very pleasant buried salmon I dug a hole here before and then lined it with stones and lit it a fire here that's been burning for the last few hours now that it's nice out we're going to put this salmon fillet wrapped in aluminum foil in there, bury it all and dig it up again in a few hours, all good, it should be ready by now, buried treasure such once oh yeah, okay, I'm trying not to get dirt in there because it's okay, so we cut some dirt off of it, it's actually well cooked, it's actually quite tasty, but also this method doesn't add any unique flavor or texture , so it's kind of a lot of work for nothing, too much reward.

I'm going to pass this salmon out of the mailbox. This mailbox has been warming up in the sun all day and it's pretty hot. We're going to put our foil-wrapped salmon in this envelope. put it in our Mailbox and check back in a few hours, we unwrap this thing, yes, it's not cooked, it's warm, in a kind of sticky handshake, the inside is totally raw, maybe if this were August in Texas, but this did nothing. I'm not eating this, I've basically been sitting in the danger zone all afternoon, hot tub salmon step hard, yeah this salmon doesn't feel that hot, our Genki hot tub was supposed to hit 104 degrees, but I'm not sure you got there.

I would probably have to reach a temperature that would really hurt me in order to cook the salmon and that didn't happen, yes that's raw, no we're all Shermans, but it was nice to take a bath, at least I wasn't. It doesn't smell fishy anymore, you know, I'm ready to get back to slow-baked salmon. Okay, we've got our salmon, it's got a little bit of salt and oil and we're going to put it in this oven at 275 degrees for about 16 to 18 minutes done and ready to go. What I love about salmon cooked this way is the way it flakes up like this. , it's so soft and silky mmm, so clean, so easy, this is one of my favorite ways to cook salmon, it's not.

There's a lot to see, but you can't mess up the grilled salmon this time. We have increased the temperature to 400 degrees and are decreasing the time to 5 to 6 minutes. Okay, and there's the roasted salmon, so even with that rise in temperature it still looks a lot like our slow-baked fish, the skin is limp, we can just scrape it off, you know, it's cooked well but it's more uneven than our slow-baked fish, more cooked on the outside, rarer on the inside, mmm, it's very tasty but not as silky as our low-temperature roasted salmon. Let's increase the oven temperature once again.

We have our salted and oiled salmon skin side up and we will place it under the broiler for a few minutes. and look what comes out on the other side, well, that seems to me to be made with the rotisserie, we had very direct heat from above but it wasn't enough to really crispy that skin, it's more hard than crispy on the inside, it's quite uneven hmm it's okay, but it doesn't really offer much, it's not better than our slow baked nor is it as crispy as our seared salmon, it's not great, so we wrapped this fillet in parchment paper, we'll slide it into 450 degrees.

Bake for about seven or eight minutes so it steams in that little package and is puffed up. I think it should be done. You know, it looks a lot like our steamed salmon. The meat is flaky and falls apart well. I mean, it's not good, but. This method would be much better if we had some aromatics, some lemon slices, maybe some white wine, some herbs that would have really enhanced the salt crusted salmon, so we topped this salmon with a mixture of beaten egg white and kosher salt. and we're going to bake this at 450 degrees until the crust is set and the inside is cooked through, it looks like it should be done right, so breaking into this crust here we discover that yes, it looks like salmon steamed in its own juice, nothing.

To point out, the inside is tender, a hair overcooked, mmm, yes, I mean, it's salty and a little dry, this salt crust has a theatrical element, but it's all show and it doesn't go well, today we cook a lot of whole salmon. in many different ways, what did we learn well? When you work with high-quality fish, you don't need to mix it too much or even at all to make it delicious. Salmon is a really indulgent and versatile fish, and most of our favorite ways to cook it were as simple and straightforward as they come. Do you have a favorite way to cook salmon that we didn't see today, leave it in the comments.