Pat the skin side of the fish dry with a paper towel. Season the skin with sea salt to add crispiness. Place a fry pan on medium-high heat and add olive oil for cooking. Place the fish onto the heated pan, skin side down.
Season the salmon fillets with salt and pepper. In a large skillet, add butter or oil and the salmon fillets skin-side down. Heat to medium-high and cook for about 5 or 6 minutes. Gently use a wide spatula to flip the fish and cook skin-side up for 3 to 5 minutes or until done.
Soak Salmon In Brine
Cooking fresh salmon typically produces a white 'skin'. You can easily prevent or at least significantly reduce this. Simply soak the salmon in a basic salt solution (one soup spoon of salt per cup of cold water) for 10 minutes – it's that easy!
The USDA cautions: “do not rinse raw fish, seafood, meat, and poultry. Bacteria in these raw juices can splash and spread to other foods and surfaces. Cooking foods thoroughly will kill harmful bacteria.”
Yes, you absolutely can eat salmon skin!
However, it is worth mentioning it's safer to only eat salmon skin from reputable, high-quality sources. Like other living organisms, fish accumulates pollutants found in air and water.
By giving a fillet a vinegar rinse (or even a full-on soak while you prepare the rest of your meal's components), you can bring out all of the fish's best qualities and textures, neutralizing any fishy scents while seasoning it.
Wrap your salmon in a parchment packet with aromatics, citrus, veggies, and a drizzle of olive oil. The steam trapped in the packet will infuse the fish with flavor and cook it gently, making it tender and juicy. Bonus: The parchment packets only take about 15 minutes at 425°F and the cleanup is minimal.
As it does with meat, brining fish serves two purposes: One, it helps season the flesh, which improves flavor, and two, by partially dissolving muscle fibers to form a water-retaining gel, it helps prevent the protein from drying out.
Rinsed Thoroughly With Cold Water
When you are cleaning the salmon, be sure to rinse raw fish thoroughly with cold water. This will help to remove any bacteria or dirt that may be on the surface of the fish. You can also use a vinegar solution to rinse off the fish if you prefer. Salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
If the salmon filets are skin on, it's a good idea to rinse and dry before cooking. Also if the filets have any fishy smell, submerge the pieces in 1 quart of water with 1 tablespoon of white vinegar then rinse with running water. This will remove the bacteria that is on the skin and improve the taste of the fish.
When you add cold fish to a hot pan, it will cook unevenly. It is a good idea to let salmon sit out for 15 to 20 minutes before cooking so that it can warm to room temperature.
Yes, you can eat salmon skin. Sure, it's metallic and a bit fishier than the fish meat itself, but when properly prepared, on-skin salmon (or even the skin alone) is an enjoyable and healthy addition to your diet.
Use a salad fork or the tip of a paring knife to test whether the top of the fish flakes apart easily. It's done cooking if it's flakey. If salmon is hard to the touch and doesn't flake when testing it with a utensil or finger, it needs to cook a little longer.
Cooking salmon on the stovetop is the ultimate in ease: if you don't want to heat up your oven or spend too much time in front of it, sautéing a fillet is the way to go. Or if you're looking for a low-fat option, poaching salmon produces tender, clean-tasting fish.
Albumin is a liquid protein that solidifies when the fish is cooked, seeping out as the muscle fibers contract under heat, becoming thick and a bright white. Think of your salmon as a wet towel being rung out. The wringing is the heat and the water being pushed out is that white stuff you're seeing.
But there are a couple tricks if you want to avoid it. One option is to brine the fish. America's Test Kitchen recommends soaking the salmon in a standard brine—one tablespoon of salt per cup of water—for just 10 minutes before cooking. That should minimize the amount of albumin forming on the surface of the fish.
"There's nothing wrong at all with eating that albumin. It tastes completely fine, it's good for you, it's just another protein that comes out from the side of the salmon." Albumin also appears when you cook your salmon quickly.
In pursuit of perfectly-pink fish, you might be tempted to remove this flesh along with the skin—but wait. Even if you love to beautify your filets, this is one area you might want to leave untouched. Why? The gray area of salmon is actually one of the most nutritious parts of the fish.
Bake salmon at 400 degrees F for 11 to 14 minutes for 6-ounce fillets or 15 to 18 minutes for a single side, until it registers 135 degrees F on an instant read thermometer inserted at the thickest part of the salmon. Remove from the oven and let rest 5 minutes.