I don’t know about you, but while I love salmon, especially with the skin on, I hate cooking it to get it the way I like it, with the skin nice and crispy, but the flesh rare. The smoke! The smell! The hassle! Nevertheless, up until now, I did this, and often, just because…well, because salmon.
Not that farmed crap, either. Nice wild salmon flash frozen on the Alaskan ketch where it was landed. Then sold to me by the woman who caught it, who happens to be a friend of one of my neighbors. Three of us go in on buying a big box of it, and I usually end up with three pounds of the delicious stuff, in individually wrapped packets.
Yum.
What I formerly liked to do was cook it really quickly on a hot pan, one side only, till barely cooked through (see Jam Today). And by ‘barely’, I mean just warmed in the center. Then I topped it with a dollop of butter smashed with peppercorns, a little soy sauce, and a squidge of wasabi paste. That melts all over the filets as I bring them to the table. Yum again.
Now, to get a really good crust on salmon, the pan used needs to be mega hot. If I use a cast iron pan, the obvious solution, my kitchen ends up smelling of fish to an unacceptable degree—at least, unacceptable anywhere but in a fish restaurant. The pan itself doesn’t lose the fishy aroma for a few scrubbings later. And, most significantly, the skin is then liable to stick to the pan. Damnation. The best part has to be scraped up from the bottom of the pan.
So I have, in the past, compromised. Ceramic pan. Which means I can’t heat it as much as the cast iron. But it’s stick-free. Not smell-free, though.
These are first world problems, of course. I never worried about it too much, just shrugged at the inevitable, and carried on enjoying my salmon.
Until, hallelujah, in the mail came a complimentary issue of Milk Street, a cooking mag edited by former Cook’s Illustrated editor Christopher Kimball. There was a lot of good info, many good hints, therein, but of all of it, the very best was a brand new way to cook salmon, get the skin crisp, and keep the pan clean and the smell out of the kitchen.
No way, you say. That’s what I would have said too. But I tried it last night, and it is now my new way of cooking salmon. All you need is a good heavy pan and some aluminum foil.
Like this:
My version of Skillet Packet Salmon (a la Milk Street) for two:
–Get two salmon fillets. Milk Street emphasizes that these should be center cut, and of a uniform thickness, but I always ignore that kind of instruction in favor of what I have. In this case, two tail end fillets, tapering to a thin end. Work with what you’ve got and enjoy the result, my motto.
–Salt them. I use kosher salt. Milk Street recommends salting and peppering after blotting dry. I don’t bother blotting at this point, and I don’t like to pepper things before cooking (with certain key exceptions, for example, steak au poivre). Salt both sides. Refrigerate. Milk Street recommends taking filets out a half hour before cooking, but I like my salmon rare, and refrigerating it first helps keep the inside of the fish cool while I’m cooking the outside.
–Heat a heavy skillet over high heat for five minutes at least. I use a cast iron skillet. I also use fireplace gloves. That sucker gets hot.
–Meanwhile, get a SHEET OF ALUMINUM FOIL. This should be large enough to fold over the filets as they sit side by side, without touching. Oil the part where the filets will sit.
–Dry the filets of any liquid that’s surfaced. Arrange them on the foil, without touching, so that they’ll fit in the pan eventually. Fold the foil over and crimp the edges, making it as airtight as you can. Though, as usual, don’t fuss over this too much.
–When the pan has heated five minutes, throw the foil packet in. Milk Street recommends for a 1 inch thick filet, to cook “5 minutes for medium, and 6 minutes for medium well, rotating the pan frequently to insure even cooking.” As I keep pointing out, I like my salmon rare. So I put my half-inch filets on for about two minutes.
–Let the packet rest off the heat for a minute. This is when I make the sauce.
–For the sauce: mix fresh ground pepper with a mash of butter (one tablespoon for two people), a dash of soy sauce, and a squidge of wasabi. Cream.
–Open the packet, careful of the steam. Decant onto plates. Top each filet with half the wasabi butter.
Accompany with lemon wedges. In our house, last night, we also had corn on the cob, and brown rice fried with garlic chips, snap peas, and, at the last minute, an addition of shredded shiso leaves from the garden. (I highly recommend growing shiso leaves. After eating them in Japanese restaurants and yearning for them after, it’s the only way forward.)
This is a wonderful way to cook salmon. The skin of mine got crispy, and the flesh was just cooked through with a barely warmed center, the way I like it. I can never thank Milk Street enough for this. Well, I guess I can thank them. Subscription request is on the way, guys.