You might be wondering: can you eat salmon raw? The short answer is: yes, but there is also an art to cooking salmon that strikes a balance between tender, juicy, and flavorful while ensuring that the fish is safe to eat. Some people prefer the taste and texture of raw salmon, but cooked salmon can be tender, moist, and flavorful and also comes with less risk of food-borne illnesses. This article is going to focus on how to cook salmon to tender perfection.
When the salmon is cooked just right, it will gently flake when pressed upon gently with your finger. Overcooked salmon will be dry, light in color, and tough when eaten. When cooking this fish, you want to make sure that you have your pan at the perfect temperature.
Too cool and the cooking process will result in an undesirable texture. Make sure you heat up your pan or oven to the desired temp before beginning the cooking process, as per your recipe.
Use tweezers to gently pluck these from your fillets. The result is a rubbery, dry, unpalatable mess. In the case of salmon, you should only apply salt just before you begin cooing your fillets, and not a minute too soon! Make sure that your pan is heated through and up to temperature, then add salt to your fish right before cooking. Removing the skin makes the fish cook too quickly and in the end, your fillets will be dry. Another related mistake is putting the fish skin-side up on your cooking surface.
Doing so will bring the same result as taking the skin off of your fillets. Ideally, your salmon fillets should be a pretty uniform thickness so the meat cooks evenly. The answer is yes! Chefs recommend eating salmon medium or medium rare because it has the best flavor and texture. While the salmon is still cooking, take note of how its color changes from a dark pink to a lighter color. Cooked salmon color inside will be an opaque pinkish white color on the outside and translucent pink on the inside.
If your fillet is still dark pink on the outside, it needs to cook more. Cook times depend on two things: the thickness of the salmon, and how you like it prepared medium-rare, medium, or well-done. At this temperature, you're more likely to see albumin, a white substance that appears when a piece of salmon is cooked, and the muscles contract. Albumin typically oozes out of the fish when it has been overcooked. It's safe to eat but it doesn't look appetizing, so you want to avoid overcooking the fish.
The fish will continue cooking a bit after it comes off of the heat but remain tender and moist inside. If your piece of salmon still has the skin on, cook it skin-side-down first to prevent albumin from appearing. Flakiness is another sign of doneness. Sturdy tweezers can be used but are less effective.
Have parchment paper or aluminum foil on hand. Use them to enclose fillets for baking fish en papillote , and for lining sheet pans, grill pans and roasting pans, which makes cleanup easier. With salmon, one size does not fit all. There are a few basic categories of cuts, each with its own treatment and purpose. Small fillets and steaks are great for fast weeknight meals, while a whole side of salmon is an easy and elegant main course for a dinner party.
Salmon fillets are the most commonly used cut of the fish, and for good reason: removing the pin bones is simple, and the cut lends itself to all methods of cooking. A fillet can be a small section of a boned side, intended to serve one or two people, or it or an entire boned side to serve a crowd.
With or without skin? That depends on how you expect to cook the fish. Certain methods, like pan-frying fillets, are designed to give you crispy skin, and that skin is delicious.
For poaching fish, however, the skin can be removed before cooking and discarded. For filleted, skinless fish, about six ounces per person is an average portion. With skin, add another ounce. These crosscut sections are best for grilling, broiling or pan-searing, though they can also be baked in a sauce. When buying more than one steak, be sure they are of uniform thickness so they cook at the same rate. Thicker steaks will be easier to cook so they acquire an attractive burnish and remain moist and succulent, roughly 10 to 12 ounces per steak.
Consider serving half a large steak per person, divided in the kitchen after cooking and plated without the skin and bones. A side can be grilled, roasted or broiled, or even poached if you own the right equipment. There are significant differences between farmed and wild salmon. Wild salmon comes from Pacific waters, and has a silky texture and a brilliant vermilion hue.
It has a superior taste, with fewer calories and less fat than farmed salmon. It is also expensive, and there is less of it in the market.
Farmed salmon is much more plentiful, and cheaper. The wild salmon sold in the United States come from the Pacific. Salmon has all but disappeared in the wild in the Atlantic, and the pockets that exist are reserved for sport fishing. The season for Pacific salmon lasts from May to September; if you see it outside of those months, it has been frozen, though it will still be delicious. Wild salmon is usually more expensive and less readily available than farmed, but if you can get it, do it; it will elevate your meal.
The most prized is Chinook or king salmon , which is the largest and most succulent of the species. Coho or silver salmon is a milder-tasting salmon and is generally wild, though there is some farm-raised Coho salmon. Steelhead trout is is a fish in the Pacific salmon genus. It has meaty pink flesh and comes in small sizes, which like two to three pounds that makes it convenient to cook whole.
Readily available all year round, farmed salmon generally has a rich, mild flavor, but lacks the salinity of wild salmon. It is also more affordably priced. Much of the farmed salmon in the United States is Atlantic salmon , though there are now some operations in the Pacific.
Some high-quality king salmon, branded Ora, is farmed in New Zealand. Some of the farmed fish is labeled organic, but that term, when it comes to creatures swimming in the sea, is controversial. Arctic char , which is also in the salmonidae family, is usually farm-raised in the most northern reaches of the Atlantic. The fish has deep orange-pink flesh and a texture that is more delicate than that of regular farmed salmon.
And because Arctic char is small, about 3 pounds, it is also an appropriate choice for cooking whole. Genetically modified salmon , which has a growth hormone gene from king salmon so it will grow two to four times faster, has been approved for sale in the United States.
It will be at least a couple of years before it reaches the market, however. Salmon fillets and sides have pinbones, the inch-long, flexible bones that stick up vertically in a row down the center of the fillet. A pair of pliers and a simple technique will get you smooth, boneless salmon. Lay your salmon fillet flat on a board or on a sheet of foil on your counter, skin side down even if there is no skin.
Run your hand across the surface of the fish. You will feel a ridge of the tiny bones sticking up. Starting at the thickest end of the fillet, use needle-nose pliers to grab the tip of the bone and firmly yank it out. There may be as many as 20 of these bones in a whole fillet. The method is easy and fast, and it works best for fillets, making it a great way to get a delicious weeknight dinner on the table.
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