The Best Salmon You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) ｜ Epicurious 101

Hi, I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor. And today, I'm going to show you how to make the best pan-seared salmon. We'll be going over the techniques to make your pan-seared salmon have crispy skin and a soft, juicy interior. This is Salmon 101. Before we get into cooking our salmon, I want to talk about how to select it when you're in the store. On a day-to-day, I prefer farm-raised salmon. Has a little more fat to it than the wild-caught salmon. If you tend to overcook it a little, all that fat helps that. It doesn't dry out. The farm-raised tends to be a little bit better when it comes to being forgiving in the pan. The first thing I always do is visually inspect it. I'm looking at the color first. Is it appealing? Does it have a nice pink, rosy color? If it's starting to get a little gray, don't buy it. Another thing that the fishmonger at the store might not want you to do, but I think you should every time, and if they don't let you do it, don't buy the fish. Just pick it up, put it close to your face, take a whiff. It should be a light ocean breeze. It should not be fishy. A last thing is I'd like to touch the salmon. You notice how my fingers aren't sticking. It's nice and smooth. It's not sticky. It's not giving me any residue. And that means that there's no slime on it, and the fish is really nice. So if any of those factors don't work for you, don't buy the salmon. Find another store. So it's time to cook the fish. I'm going to turn my pan on. I'm going to go to a medium-high heat. I'm putting enough oil in there so that it coats the whole bottom of the pan. We're not deep frying here, but I do want the oil to make one level so that I get really nice browning and even cooking. So while that heats up, I'm going to season my fillets. A little bit of black pepper, a little bit of salt. Now, one of the most important things right now is to make sure that the skin and the salmon is dry. I have a paper towel. I'm just going to dab it. I like to do it after I season because salt draws out moisture. If we put salmon in the pan and it's wet, not only is it going to stick, we're not going to get a nice crispy skin. You can see that my oil is starting to get a little shimmery. There should be a light amount of smoke before it goes in. I have two tools here. I have a pair of tongs and a fish spatula. Fish spatula has these wide openings and a very thin and bendy blade, which is great. The only problem with this is that everyone's always trying to force their way under the salmon, and usually they tear the skin. What's cool about salmon is that it will tell you when it's ready to be turned, right? That's why I use tongs. The tongs will let me gently turn the salmon without ripping any skin or tearing any flesh. So you can see that my oil is getting nice and shimmery. One last time with the paper towel before we go in. The skin side is my presentation side. I always put my presentation side in the pan first. Not only that, I'm going to drop it in the pan away from me so that when it splashes, oil will splash that way and not on me. Now what we want to do is leave it alone. I'm going to lower my heat just a little because it looks like it's a little hot. A lot of times what people are going to do is they're going to start fussing with this. And once you start fussing with it, that's when things get ripped and the skin falls off. It starts to break. It's a little sticky. That's okay. Leave it alone. We're going to let the salmon tell us when it's ready. Let the salmon kind of brown. Let the skin start to get crispy. We're going to cook it most of the way on the skin side. Main point is leave it alone. Let it cook. Trust the process. Trust Chef Frank. These are ready to turn, right? Look how they free themselves up. We're going to turn it over and we have some nice crispy skin. Crispy, crunchy, delicious. Part of the reason why you probably don't like fish skin is because it's not crispy. I'm going to lower my heat now. And we're just going to let them finish cooking on the flesh side. I want it nice and rosy pink in the center, not raw, just rosy pink and still nice and juicy, just for a few minutes. We're not going to go crazy on the flesh side because that's when you start seeing the salmon drying out and stuff like that. And at this point, the fish will separate itself from the pan. And now we're just going to let it cook on low until it's cooked through. At this point, you might be wondering, hey, I'm going to cook the sides. You can cook the sides if you want. It's totally up to you. I just like to leave it on the skin or the bottom side. I like to see that rosy pink. I don't need that to be brown. I think we're good. I can take my salmon out and let it rest. It's still very pink in the center, which is fine. Let the temperature equalize. If it gets cold on the resting rack, that's fine. We can always reheat it in the oven or in the pan, but I'm going to let it rest on a rack. I don't want to put it skin side down on the rack. We've done a lot of work to get this skin super crispy. If you put it skin side down on the rack, what's going to happen? Anything? It's going to get soggy. We're not going to have crispy skin anymore. So put it on a rack or a tray or a plate, skin side up. The skin will stay crispy. Now it's time to plate. My salmon is rested. It should be nice and juicy. I want to get one more view of this skin. Listen, crispy skin. I have a little bit of salad here. It's dressed with some lemon juice and olive oil. We can put a salmon on this and it's not going to wilt immediately. Just a little bit of lemon on the side in case someone wants to squeeze it. And that's my plate. Perfectly cooked pan-seared salmon. But let's see my inside here. Oh, look at that. Still pink, still nice and juicy. You see how it flakes when I cut it? That means it's cooked and not raw. Let me give it a taste. Perfectly moist and pink on the inside. Seasoning is great. Flavor's great. And there you have it, folks. My pan-seared salmon, crispy skin, juicy interior every single time.