Salmon Tips and Tricks

REMOVING THE GILLS Salmon breathe through their gills, feathery tissues that allow the fish to extract oxygen from the water in exchange for carbon dioxide. The gills need to be removed if you are cooking a whole salmon, or using the head to make Salmon Stock, because they contain impurities and will make a sauce or stock taste bitter. Lift up the gill plate, the flap just behind the eyes, on one side of the head and you’ll see the gills—feathery tissue that is pink or red and half-moon shaped. They are attached at the head and at the collarbone. Using sharp kitchen shears or a knife, cut out the gills on one side of the head at the two attached points. Turn the fish over and repeat to remove the gills from the other side. Discard the gills, rinse the fish, and pat it dry with paper towels.

FILLETING If you are purchasing a whole salmon and are planning to fillet it, ask the fish market to fillet it for you. It takes a little practice to get clean, smooth fillets off the bones without jagged cuts. But, if you want to fillet your own, here is the method I use. Assuming the salmon has already been cleaned through the belly (see “Cleaning and Gutting Salmon,”), place the salmon on its side and make a diagonal cut just behind the gill cover. Do this on both sides, and then cut through to detach the head. Using a sharp, flexible boning knife, slice down the length of the fish, starting at the head end, making a cut all the way through the spine bone. Again starting at the head end and working your way down to the tail while keeping your knife almost flat against the bones, skim the knife along the bones in a smooth sliding motion, trying not to stop. As you are slicing, lift the fillet with your other hand, allowing you to see the flesh being sliced away from the bone. Slice in this manner all the way down to the tail. Turn the salmon over and repeat the process on the other side to remove the second fillet. Trim off the rib bones from the upper side of each fillet. If desired, save the head, bones, and trimmings for making Salmon Stock.

SKINNING A SALMON FILLET Lay the salmon fillet skin side down with the tail facing you. Grip the tail with a piece of paper towel, or you can put a little coarse salt on your fingertips to create traction. Using a sharp, flexible boning knife, angle the blade towards the skin and, while you are gripping the tail skin with one hand, cut along the skin as smoothly as you can. Cut all the way from the tail to the head end, keeping the skin taut. Discard the skin.

REMOVING PIN BONES Run your fingertips along the flesh side of the fillet until you feel the pin bones. Using either clean needle-nose pliers (I keep a pair in the kitchen precisely for this use) or fish tweezers, grasp the end of each bone and pull it straight out and away from the flesh to remove it. If you try to pull them upwards or backwards it tends to tear the flesh.

 

CUTTING FILLETS Most of the main-course recipes in this book call for a 6-ounce fillet as a portion size. Though restaurants sometimes serve as much as 8 ounces of salmon on an entrée plate, I think that is an unnecessarily large serving. In addition, most of the recipes call for the salmon to be cut into fillet portions rather than into steaks. Salmon steaks, unless they are cut from the tail end, are tricky to cook because the belly flaps (the thin pieces at the ends of the steaks) hang down and cook more quickly than the center of the steak. Salmon steaks can be deboned and tied into medallions, but this is a fussy and time-consuming job.

There are several ways to cut salmon fillets from a boned side of salmon: Place a whole fillet skin side up and cut the fillet crosswise into straight-sided portions. Or, cut the fillet in half lengthwise, and then cut crosswise into portions. If you want to serve only the thicker portions, reserve the belly portion of the fillet for chowder or for tartare. For diagonally sliced fillets, start at the head end, following the natural diagonal line of the fillet. Cut fillet portions on a sharp angle through the flesh. If you look at the cross section, it will not be a rectangular shaped piece, but a parallelogram with angled sides. As you cut portions, the pieces at the head end should be thinner in width than at the tail end in order to achieve the same weight per serving. Finally, to achieve a butterfly cut from a skinless square-cut portion of salmon, cut straight down the middle of the flesh, but not all the way through. Fold back the two halves as if the piece of salmon were a butterfly opening its wings. The piece of salmon will now look like a salmon steak without the bone in the center. Make a slightly deeper cut if the butterflied portion does not lie flat.

 

SKIN-DRYING SALMON I learned about this technique for achieving crisp - skinned salmon several years ago from an article by Thomas Keller (owner of the famed French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California) in the Los Angeles Times food section. He writes, “The skin of many fish is exquisite, never more so than when it’s crisped to a delicate wafer-thin crunch accompanying the sweet, soft flesh. Crisp fish skin should taste clean and fresh, with the concentrated flavor of the fish itself. Its colors and design are vivid on the plate. The fork clicks on its surface. It cracks brittlely beneath a knife.”

The critical technique is to remove as much water as possible from the skin of the fish before cooking it. Keller writes: “Remove some of that water mechanically, by drawing a knife blade firmly back and forth over the fish, the way a wiper blade moves across a windshield. The pressure compresses the skin and squeezes the water to the surface, and the knife blade carries it away. Repeat this until no more water rises to the surface.” Periodically wipe the knife blade clean with a paper towel to remove what looks like grayish scum.