Hello everyone, I am Xiao Gao Jie, today we will see how to prefect salmon cooking.
Its colour looks very nice,
and feels crispy on the outside.
Inside the meat is pink colour throughout, and very soft,
but the most important, it tastes super juicy and delicious.
How to achieve this result? We need one extra step, that is sous vide.
No need to purchase sous vide equipment, a rice cooker will do.
Besides, it is very easy to work with a rice cooker.
Skinless and boneless salmon.
Buy as much as you need.
Divide it into the serving size to your preference.
I got seven pieces.
Season the salmon.
Green onion and ginger.
Plus 1/4 cup of regular soy sauce.
Move around the salmon.
Put bigger pieces at bottom to better absorb the flavour.
Cover it, and marinate overnight in the fridge.
The next day,
remove onion and ginger.
Put fish into the Ziploc bags.
After removing the last piece, you can see there is not much soy sauce left.
Now we will remove the air and seal the bags,
to guarantee an even transfer of heat from water to the fish.
You can put it into a water basin, using the pressure of the water to push the air bubbles out.
I usually use a straw.
Put the straw in one side the bag,
then seal it from the other side.
Now inhale, take out the straw and completely seal the bag.
The three actions are completed at the same time.
Check the bags, make sure they are completely sealed, otherwise you will make poached fish.
Heat up the water.
Turn off the heat, when the water temperature reaches 55 degrees celsius.
The ideal temperature for sous vide salmon is 50 degrees Celsius.
When I pour the water into the rice cooker,
and then put in the cold salmon which were taken out from the fridge,
the water temperature will drop. The drop of the temperature has also been taken into account.
Pour in as much water as you can. The more the water, the stable the water temperature.
Put in salmon vertically.
Water bath the thicker pieces for 30 minutes, fish comes out as medium rare.
Thinner fillets require 20 minutes,
while 15 minutes for the thinnest fillets.
Salmon will not be pasteurized with this temperature and time.
If salmon quality can not be guaranteed, sous vide is not recommended.
Turn on the keep warm function.
After 30 minutes,
Open the lid and check the temperature.
It is right at 50 degrees Celsius.
You can tell that the water temperature should be around 50 degrees Celsius in the past 30 minutes.
It can not be too much variation in the temperature range.
You can see some white stuff on the plastic bag, it is protein.
It is similar to the egg white protein.
Normally it is clear and transparent liquid. When heated it will turn into white solid.
The white stuff is not a lot, since we have marinated fish with soy sauce.
It will not affect the final result after frying.
Cut the plastic bags with scissors.
Try not to open the plastic bag, and take out the fish with your hand.
It will break, at this time fish is very tender.
Some juice will come out, but not much.
The next step is to pan fry the fish.
Before I do that, I will show you what the fish looks like inside after water bath.
The salmon flakes easily just with a gentle squeeze of the chopsticks.
You can tell from the look, the texture is really soft and extremely juicy.
It tastes great, and smells nice too.
Let's compare it to a raw fish.
You can see clearly, raw salmon is orange,
while the cooked one is pink.
Now we will pan fry the fish.
Dry the fish with a paper towel.
Salt,
and pepper.
Dust a thin layer of corn starch.
Corn starch achieves three purposes:
1, continue to absorb juice on the fish;
2, prevent the fish from stick to the pan;
3, increase the crispiness of the fish surface.
Pour oil to a heated cast iron pan.
Both pan and oil are very hot with smoke, put the fish in.
Medium high heat.
Do not move it, fry it about one minute.
Loose the bottom, make sure the fish is not stick to the pan.
Then flip.
Fry the other side for about 1 minute.
You see, a very thin layer of starch can help fish come out very nice,
and crispy.
The look is important, it stimulates your appetite,
but the key is the inside texture.
Ultimately the inside tells you if the fish tastes good or not.
The pan sear time is very brief, so the inside still remains the same texture after the water bath.
Sous vide time for salmon is 30 minutes, neither long nor short.
A rice cooker can accurately maintain the desired temperature,
so it is ideal for sous vide salmon.
It is a household item, you do not need to purchase additional sous vide equipment.
Learn a simple technique, spend a bit longer time.
With a simple household cooking device,
you can cook the salmon to perfection!
Thank you for watching, I'm Xiao Gao Jie. See you in the next episode^^