Once your fish is chilled, season both sides with kosher salt. Now, put some olive oil in a stainless steel skillet and...don’t turn the heat on. We’re going to place our fish in the room temperature pan, skin-side down, and then turn on the heat to high. Just trust. We call this the cold pan method, and it will ultimately give the skin on our fish a crispier skin.
Lookin' suuuuuuuuper crispy.
In the first two minutes that the pan is heating up, keep a spatula (hopefully a fish spatula) pressed firmly over the fish. This will keep the edges from curling up. We’re trying to make our kitchen restaurant-ish, remember? Restaurants don’t serve curled fish filets.
After removing the spatula, the fish should start to visibly cook. You’ll see the edges of the fish move from translucent to opaque. Once the flesh of the fish has turned opaque all the way up to the thickest section of the filet (this usually takes about 3 minutes for a thin filet; thicker pieces will take longer), we’re going to turn off the heat and flip the fish. At this point, 90% of the fish has cooked through, so we’re going to use the residual heat in the pan to finish off the filet. Let the filet rest on the skin-less side for a little over a minute.
Woah. Look at that skin! It’s so beautiful, crispy to the point of textural royalty. It’s calling to us. BUT WAIT. We need to serve this filet with something. Maybe it’s over some rice. Maybe it’s over a green curry. Maybe it’s over a salsa verde or yogurt sauce. Just remember that if you're serving your fish with sauce, make sure that the fish is always served OVER it, skin-side up—we don’t want any moisture-heavy sauce to ruin that crispy skin we worked so hard for.
And that’s it. You might have noticed that the cook time on this is only about 6 minutes, and the result is pretty professional. Your kitchen is small; my kitchen is small. But the payoff? HUGE.
Yeah, the kitchen is starting to feel restaurant-ish right? This fish technique is pretty professional. It’s impressive. It’s empowering. This is some real restaurant-level stuff. Oh, no. I’m so sorry, we’re booked for the evening. You can leave your number if you’d like, just in case we get a cancellation. It doesn’t look promising though. My roommate is using one half of the couch. And the coffee table is the only place to eat.
A little cabbage stir-fry sounds like a pretty good fish companion:
This method guarantees perfectly-cooked, crispy-skinned salmon every time. We promise.
