Salmon fillets 101

If you're nervous about cooking fish,

salmon

is a great fish to learn because it's so forgiving. Salmon is good when perfectly cooked over medium heat. It's good when it's rare because, after all, it's good when it's completely raw and thanks to the high fat content of

salmon

. It's still pretty good when you overcook it, it's very hard to ruin this fish. I'll give you some basic ways to cook it, but first let's go shopping, we'll stick to

fillets

and the first question is farmed versus wild, here's farmed fish. It's wild here and you can tell by the color.

Farmed salmon has a pale orange color that always reminds me of cream. Wild salmon has a more intense color. This is sockeye salmon, which of the five main wild salmon species has the most reddish color. The inside of blood orange farmed salmon meat would be gray if farmers didn't feed them the pigment astaxanthin, which brings the color closer to real wild salmon. Anthon asked us, naturally, which crustaceans eat and get much more. farmers skimp on it because it is expensive as a food additive. The other sign that it's farmed is the white ribbons running down the meat, so that's the fat and farmed salmon generally has a higher fat content, which you can see, that's good or bad.

It depends on what you want, but one way in which wild salmon is arguably superior is in the type of fat. Both fish have a mix of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids if you eat a fairly standard Western diet like I do. That means you should probably eat more omega-3 and less omega-6 and that's exactly what wild salmon gives you. Farmed salmon has much more omega-6 proportionally, which probably makes it less healthy for most people looking at this. wild today and unless you live near the fishery and say Alaska, your salmon will freeze, it arrived frozen at your supermarket, they thought about it and put it in the fish box.

The salmon harvest comes all at once at one time of year, so it has to freeze, that's fine. Modern flash freezing is surprisingly good at preserving quality according to my own little grading system. Fillets come in three basic shapes depending on where they were cut across the side of the fish. This is what I call the car shape. Look, it's like a little hatchback beep-beep, those tend to be my favorites, then you'll get some thinner, more uniform pieces like these. I call those the flat pieces and then there's the back piece that you can spot by the shape that both pieces have.

Its virtues too as you will see that the

fillets

have had the bone cut off, that is what makes them fillets, but salmon fillets usually come with some small bones that you need to take out, you will see them poking out and you can just pull them out with the fingers, the fillet naturally has a million bones, the processors take them out, but they usually leave some out, understandably, then there is the question of the skin, the scales have been removed, so many people eat the skin. I'm not a big fan, but unless you need skinless pieces for a fish pie or something, I wouldn't try to cut the skin at this stage, it's much easier to remove the skin after the fish is cooked and we cook. start with a stainless steel skillet, not my favorite option, you'll see why medium heat, a little salt and pepper and I love garlic powder.

I love it in general, but I especially love it with salmon, it goes perfectly and although it would burn at temperatures that you would brown beef or pork, it browns and toasts at the precise temperature I like to brown salmon at anyway , so a big fan of garlic powder here, a little olive oil in the pan and you can see it shine there, but it's not smoking a lot that temperature is perfect I like to cook my salmon most of the meat side a lot People do the opposite, they want the skin to be crispy. I don't normally eat the skin so I don't care and salmon the meat gets such a delicious crust if you let it brown slowly but completely here's another reason why salmon is easy it has a window just look at the cutting side the cross section.

I like to turn the fish when I can see it by the color. change it to be half cooked at most, but since I'm using a steel pan I have to worry about it sticking. I don't want to turn this until the crust is firm enough that it won't stick or break when the time comes. to turn around and when I got up the courage to do it, yes, it had a hair burn and yet it was still stuck and took a little beating. I'm not a fan of sticky pans for fish fillets, now normally I'd just give this another minute or two on the skin.

I want to throw it out when that window on the side still looks a hair raw in the center, but I'm deliberately overcooking this. I'm waiting until that cross section has completely changed color and oops! the skin stuck on, that's what I mean when I say the skin comes off much easier after cooking, some people love to eat that, by the way, it's worth a try, even if you're skeptical, well this is what it looks like the salmon overcooked inside. how it falls apart, but this is what's still pretty good. You can overcook salmon because the fat melts and compensates for the water loss.

The fish is still wet. However, let's try again and this time we will use a Teflon. frying pan, this is definitely the easiest option if you don't feel confident about the heat, it's medium heat, a little olive oil, this time I'm using the tail, the tails and the flat parts are good because they are quite thick uniform, meaning they will cook evenly if you like that. I realize my heat is too low and it doesn't sizzle. I think you want a smooth sizzle with salmon every time. I'm looking out the fish window again and when I can see the heat has gone up almost by half.

I'll flip it over and see how easy it was with a non stick pan fish and eggs, that's what these things are great for, you can also see the inside of the fish and you can see little cracks on the top. raw on the inside but this time I'm going to cook it undercooked on purpose it comes let it sit for a second here you can see it crumbling instead of falling apart it's warm but basically raw in the center my wife would call it undercooked I actually would call it perfect that's it delicious to me, if there were bacteria in this thing, they would be on the surface where we cooked them, therefore we sterilized them.

The main concern for pathogens inside the salmon is the parasites that are killed by the freezing process, so I'm fine. with this, but this time let's try to pull it off and this time I'm going to use my well seasoned cast iron skillet. This is an option if you don't want to use Teflon. The olive oil shimmers but does not smoke yet. It's perfect and this time. I'm cooking the car part, which is my favorite, why is it my favorite? Because it has uneven thickness. I like rare salmon. I like well-cooked salmon. It's all good and this gives me a taste of all those flavors in the thinnest portion.

The part in there is from the belly, which has proportionally more fat, so it's actually good to overcook it. It is fried from the inside. It's as if this fish has evolved to be cooked. You can see it still sticks with me. I'm not super. If you're confident with cast iron, maybe you can do it better and then right after you flip it, something you can do is add a little bit of butter for basting. I also like to squeeze in some lemon juice. At this point, it will cook a little, which will soften it slightly. that and the butter you end up getting something that tastes like a beurre blanc sauce and it took almost no work to drizzle it a little with a spoon and when the salmon window on the side still looks a little raw in the center I'll take it out. some steamed broccoli on the side and that's all I need for dinner.

This is a very common weekday meal in our house. Quick, easy and good for you. You can see that the salmon is still soft and moist in the center. I would call it medium. rare salmon I like it rarer, but if I were cooking for other people, this is what I assume most people want. Well, salmon also looks great under the broiler, what the British call a grill, unless it's a very thick fillet. I think you want your grill. completely hot, I'm just going to put oil in a cold oven safe skillet, take one of my flat pieces, flatten it and coat it with oil, a little bit of pepper but no salt, you'll see why in a second right below.

On the hot broiler, you can do this with salt and pepper, but I'm going to summon the bear upside down and make a quick honey and soy sauce glaze. Soy sauce is salty. Give it an initial brush and then put the excess honey back on. it's going to leak and burn, that's why we don't put this in at the beginning, we give it a second rush and after 5 minutes total I can see little spaces starting to open up between the meat flakes, which means it's cooked , there is no point in turning it around. when you make it under the grill, it's super easy and tasty and lastly, I'll give you a recipe that I'm pretty sure I was drunk when I came up with it.

I'm not proud of it, but it's good because it's a great way to use up leftover mashed potatoes. You can heat it in the microwave to make it soft and spreadable. It's good if you have some fresh herb to mix in. I'm using dill, a classic flavor, with salmon, just breaking up a bunch of that, this mash already has butter, milk, salt and pepper in a pretty standard mashed potato and then like I said, I'm not proud of this dish, a large handful of grated cheese, whatever type you have, you can use parmesan. It obviously tastes good, but it also helps bind all of this together by forming a solid crust for the fish.

A little oil in an oven-safe frying pan. I'm not going to grease the meat side because I want it to be sticky and not slippery, you need to season it. Honestly, I forgot to make some salt. When I had this, it needs its own salt, not just the salt from the mash, and I'm just pressing a thin layer of cheesy mash onto the salmon. I leave a piece exposed so that I can observe if it is cooked under my completely hot grill. A flat piece of salmon is best for this if it were a piece of car, the shorter end would be further from the grill and would not acquire enough color when the crust is browned and again.

I can see the salmon flakes starting to open up from each other. This totally looks like something you'd get at a fast casual family restaurant chain, but honestly, it's great. I mean no disrespect to this beautiful fish. to me by the sponsor of this video Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon about 8,000 small boat fishermen in Bristol Bay Alaska sent me the fish and the goober suit to go with it How do I look? Bristol Bay is home to the largest and most sustainable wild salmon. The planet runs more than 90 percent of the wild salmon caught in the US comes from Alaska and 75% of the wild Sokka I caught in Alaska comes from Bristol Bay, it is delicious and super good, remember that salmon Wild has a high ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 and is naturally packed with astaxanthin, which has its own potential. health benefits, you can learn more and find Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon near you in the links in the description and seriously, if you're afraid of cooking fish, try Sam's and you can hardly mess it up.