The Best Salmon You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101

Hi, I'm professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto and today I'm going to show you how to

make

the

best

pan-seared

salmon

. We'll go over the techniques so that your

salmon

pants here have crispy skin and a soft texture. Juicy interior, this is salmon 101. Before we start cooking our salmon, I want to talk about how to select it when you're at the store on a day-to-day basis. I prefer farmed resin to have a little more fat than wild salmon. If you tend to overcook it, all that fat helps it from drying out, the crop tends to be a little better when it comes to forgiving in the pan, the first thing I always do is visually inspect it.

I'm looking at the color first, is it attractive? Does it have a nice rosy pink color? If it's starting to turn a little gray, don't buy it. Another thing the store's fish monitor may not want you to do, but I think you should.

ever

y time and if they don't let you do it don't buy the fish, pick it up, put it close to your face, smell it, it should be a light ocean breeze, it shouldn't have a fishy smell, the last thing I would do I like to touch the salmon, you notice that my fingers don't stick, it's nice and soft, it's not sticky, it doesn't leave any residue on me and that means no slime and the fish is very good so if any of those factors don't work.

It doesn't work for you, don't buy the salmon, find another store, so it's time to cook the fish. I'm going to turn on the frying pan. I'm going to put it on medium-high heat. I'm putting enough oil in there. so that it covers the entire bottom of the pan, we're not going to fry here, but I want the oil to reach a level so that it browns really well and cooks evenly, so while it's heating up I'm going to season my steaks a little bit. a little bit of black pepper a little bit of salt now one of the most important things now is to

make

sure that the skin and the salmon are dry.

I have a paper towel. I'm just going to rub it. I like to do it later. Season because salt draws out moisture, if we put salmon in the pan and it's wet, not only is it going to stick, we're not going to get a nice crispy skin, you can see my oil is starting to shimmer a little bit, there should be a slight amount of smoke before it enters. I have two tools here. I have a pair of tongs and a fish spatula. The fish spatula has wide openings and a very thin, flexible blade, which is great.

The only problem with this is that

ever

yone is always trying to work their way under the salmon and usually tear the skin. The nice thing about salmon is that it will let you know when it's ready to turn it to the right, which is why I use tongs. The tongs will allow me to gently turn the salmon without tearing the skin or tearing the flesh so you can see that my oil is getting nice and shiny one last time with the paper towel before moving to the skin side is my presentation side . I always put my presentation side in the pan first, not just that. let it fall into the pan away from me so that when the oil splatters it will splatter that way and not on me now what we want to do is leave it like this I'm going to lower the heat just a little bit because it seems like it's a little Many times it's interesting what the people are going to do or start to worry about this and once you start worrying about it that's when things rip and the skin falls off, it starts to break, it's a little sticky, okay, leave it. we're just going to let the salmon tell us when it's done let the salmon brown a little let the skin start to get crispy we're going to cook it most of the skin side the main point is to leave it alone, let it cook trust the process trust the friend Chef these are ready to turn right watch them release let's flip them over and we have a nice crispy skin Crispy Crispy delicious part of the reason you probably don't like the skin The fish is not crispy, I'm going to lower the heat now and let them finish cooking on the meat side.

I want it nice and pink in the center, not raw just pink and still nice and juicy just for a few minutes we won't go crazy with the meat because that's when you start to see the salmon dry out and stuff like that and at this point the fish gets It will separate from the pan and now we're just going to leave it. simmer everything until cooked through at this point, you might be wondering, hey, I'm going to cook the sides, you can cook the sides if you want, it's totally up to you. I just like to leave it on the skin or on the bottom.

I'd like to see that Pinky pink I don't need it to be brown I think we're good I can take out my salmon, let it rest, it's still very pink in the center which is fine, let the temperature equalize if it's cold on the resting rack It's okay, we can always reheat it in the oven or in the pan, but I'm going to let it sit on a rack. I don't want to put it skin side down on the rack, we've worked hard to get this skin super crispy if you put it skin side down on the rack, what will happen to anyone?

It will get soaked. We won't have the crispy skin anymore, so place it on a rack, tray or plate with the skin side up. The skin will remain crispy now it's time to place it on the plate. My salmon is rested, it should be rich and juicy. I want to see this skin once again. Listen to the crispy skin. I have some salad here, dressed with a little lemon juice and olive oil. I can put salmon on top and it's not going to wilt immediately just a little bit of lemon on the side in case someone wants to squeeze it in and that's my plate perfectly grilled salmon but let's look at my insides here oh look at that still pink still nice and juicy, see how it crumbles when I cut it, that means it's cooked and not raw, let me give it a perfectly moist and pink inside.

The season is great, the flavor is great and there you have it, friends, here in Salmon. Juicy interior with crispy skin every time.