Giada De Laurentiis' Salmon Piccata | Giada’s Italian Weeknight Dinners | Food Network

Hi guys, I'm Jada and I'm making some salmon piccata today. It's sort of my spin on a chicken piccata. It's very easy, super delicious, and I'm adding a couple of different ingredients like mustard for one. But we're going to use four beautiful six ounce salmon fillets here. If you can get center cut, that's great. If not, don't worry about it. Use what you can find. If you can't find salmon, um, chicken is the obvious, right? You could use other fish like halibut would work well. You could use snapper if you wanted to. It's really a sauce that goes with just about anything. That's what I love about this. And it's so fast and easy. And we're just seasoning the salmon with a little bit of salt. Just about a teaspoon of salt. Add all of these. And what I really like to do before cooking my salmon is to pat it dry. Make sure there's not a lot of extra water. That way you can get a nice sear on your salmon. All right, so let's get them in the pan. So I started heating my nonstick skillet and I like to make these in a nonstick skillet. I just find it's a little bit easier. It's also easier for cleanup. Add a little bit of olive oil to the pan. I've already started heating it. You can kind of feel it. And then I take the salmon and I put the beautiful flesh side down first. You can hear that sizzle. And I've already removed the skin. You can ask your fish person to remove the skin for you, or you can do it yourself. There we go. So while the salmon cooks, and it's going to cook about four minutes or so on the bottom side, then we'll flip it and cook it another minute or so. And while that cooks, I'm going to get started on the sauce part. So the sauce is super easy. And what I like to do is use a shallot. Shallots are a little bit milder than an onion. They're a little bit sweeter. So when you have kids like I do, Jade prefers a shallot. You could use scallions or you could use any kind of onion you can find. It's sort of just the base flavor that you're going to use. So we're just going to chop up our shallot. And this is a dish that's got a rotation at my house. I think just because it's so easy. And I can make it with all different types of proteins. So it kind of feels different every time. There we go. A classic piccata has lemon and capers in it. And I'm going to add some mustard to it today just to make it a little tiny bit more elegant. And also because when it comes to salmon, salmon has a little bit more flavor than chicken. And I like that sort of wine sort of Dijon bite acidity into the sauce. All right. So our shallot is really, really fresh and it's making me cry. And there's really no way to get around that. It's actually kind of good for your eyes. It just feels a little uncomfortable. We're also going to use a lemon, which I'm going to wait actually to cut because we want to zest the lemon. So let's take a look at our fish again. So what you want to do is make sure that you leave the fish to cook and don't disturb it because you want to create a really nice crust on the bottom side. And when the fish is ready, you'll start to see, when it's ready to flip, you'll start to see it starts to cook all the way up the sides. All right. So this is going to need another minute or two. In the meantime, let's chop some parsley. So we're ready to go when the fish comes out. So I've got some beautiful parsley here. And the parsley is really as a finishing touch. So you could use other herbs if you wanted to. In Italian cooking, we use a lot of Italian parsley. It's got sort of a nice, bright, herby flavor to it and aroma. And it adds some freshness to a dish that's being cooked. That's why we add it. And that's why we like it. I'm just chopping it up so it's ready to go. There we go. It's very fresh. All right. Time to flip the fish. Let's check the fish and see what it looks like. And I know fish can be tricky for people, but I think that if you read it and you don't disturb it, you don't try to play around with it, and you get a nice hot pan to start with, it actually makes it really easy to cook. All right. Let's flip these babies. Here we go. Number one. Let's try this one. I like to take a peek before I go in there. It's not quite done yet. You want your fish, especially salmon, to almost smell like watermelon, and then you know it's super fresh. There we go. Gorgeous. One more to flip. Okay. We need this to cook for another minute on the bottom side, which isn't very long. That's kind of the reason that people love fish, because it cooks so quickly. So you've got dinner on the table in just a couple of minutes. I'm going to wash my hands real quick. I think this is ready. Come on, little guy. Get away. Okay. So now we're going to grab our shallots. Put them right into the oil. Just like a little oil. And we're going to cook down the shallot for a minute and kind of allow the shallot to cook in the oil that's left over from cooking the salmon, because that's where all the flavor of sauce is going to be. There we go. And I think the piccata sauce is probably one of the most popular and most googled sauces for chicken or really anything, which is why it makes such a great overnight. It's so fast and only needs a few ingredients. Okay. So now we are going to add capers. And what I love about the capers is they have sort of a salty, briny kind of flavor to them. I've already drained them, and I'm adding two tablespoons of capers. And if you don't have capers, you could add olives if you wanted to. It's not quite the same flavor, but it'll still add nice dimension. We are going to add some third cup chicken broth, but you could also add... There we go. But you could also add clam juice. That would work really well with the salmon. Or veggie broth. And you know what? If you don't have any of it, just add water and just add a little bit more salt. Then one of the main ingredients of this is lemon. I love lemon. So we're going to zest a whole lemon, and we're also going to juice the whole lemon. Because again, that acidity and that sort of fresh lemon flavor works really well in waking up all of the flavors of the salmon. And if you don't have lemon, the next best thing would be maybe an orange, although it'll be a lot sweeter. A little citrus. Whatever citrus you can get your hands on. In California, we grow a lot of citrus, so it's a little bit easier to find it sometimes here. Great. And the zest of the lemon is so great because it gives the whole sauce a wonderful perfume, which is different than the actual juice of the lemon, which gives it a nice acidity. So that's why you want a little bit of both. And remember, you want to zest your lemon before you cut it in half and juice it. God, it smells good. It smells good in here! And hopefully it smells good in your kitchen as well. There we go. Bring it up to a very light simmer. Next, we're going to add mustard. So I'm using some Dijon mustard, just a tablespoon, so not very much, but it adds a nice tang and thickness to the sauce and kind of brings the sauce together. So I really, really like it. You could use grain mustard if you had it. Really, any mustard will work. Dijon mustard is made from brown mustard seeds and white wine, and it's the white wine in this mustard that I love so much in this dish. So you see how the sauce came together? It kind of brings everything together. And then we're going to add two tablespoons of butter. I'm going to let that melt. It's very delicate, so it will work on any fish. Okay, so we'll get ready. We melted that. Next, we're going to add the parsley. Time for a little parsley. And you can always thin it out with a little bit of water, a tablespoon or two of water if you need to, if it gets too thick. It kind of depends on the heat of the pan, and at times it can. So I just added a couple tablespoons of water, but you don't have to add too much. There we go. Okay, butter's melted, and we are ready with our sauce. Here we go. Ta-da! Salmon piccata! I gotta say, best combination. The buttery salmon with the bright, lemony, capery sauce, and a little bit of tang from mustard. It is absolute perfection. Thanks for joining me, you guys. I hope you love it, too.