Sable. It’s a glorious fish. You probably had it in a restaurant, you just didn’t
realize it. How could you eat a fish without realizing it?
Easy. It was most likely served to you under the name of butterfish or black cod.
We don’t do this with any other animals. We don’t sell duck under the name of “red
chicken”. We don’t sell lamb under the name of “little cow”. But with fish, we
do this all the time. In spite of what you’ve read in the media, fish renaming is not always
malicious. If someone sells you perch, but calls it a red snapper, that’s not nice.
It’s the same as selling you beef top round and calling it tenderloin. Red snapper has
much better texture and thus fetches much higher price. But calling sable black cod
or butterfish is an attempt to help you discover one of the most prized fishes of the world.
It’s incredibly soft, super fatty, and sweet.
Here is how sable landed on so many restaurant menus. Remember the chilean sea bass craze
of the 90’s. It was on every high end restaurant menu because it was sweet and buttery, and
insanely forgiving of overcooking. Unfortunately, our insatiable appetite for this fish almost
brought it to extinction. Once the chefs became aware of this issue, most of them have stopped
cooking it, and now the species is gradually making a comeback. But getting rid of chilean
seabass on the menu was not an easy thing to do. For some chefs, that was their signature
dish and they needed a substitute. And that’s when sable came to the rescue. Sure it was
a lot softer than chilean seabass, but it had the same flavor profile and fat content
and worked flawlessly in any recipes designed for chilean seabass.
The problem was that few people in the US heard about sable and using its real name
on restaurant menus was hurting the sales. So the fish industry came up with two alternative
names. “Butterfish” to describe its rich soft texture, and “black cod”, well….
because everyone is familiar with cod. Sable flesh does look a bit like cod and both fish
flake very easily, but the similarity ends there. Cod flakes are firm and lean and sable
flakes are so soft they practically melt in your mouth. In case you are wondering, cod
and sable are completely different species. Biologically, they have as much in common
as swordfish and salmon.
I have tried cooking sable all different ways, but nothing comes even close to the Japanese
method of marinating it in miso and sake and then broiling it to a mahogany lacquered finish.
This is my ultimate special occasion fish dish.
Ok, let’s get to it. In a small bowl, combine 60g white miso, 30g sake, and 15g sugar and
whisk well.
Once the miso is dissolved. Whisk in 30g of neutral oil, like canola or grapeseed.
The exact amounts are not that important, feel free to eyeball everything for this marinade.
That’s what I normally do unless I am testing a recipe for you. Also note that you don’t
need expensive sake here. The sake I use for cooking costs about $10 a bottle and it can
live happily in your fridge for months.
In my opinion, sable’s skin is too tough to be enjoyable. My fishmonger sells it without
skin, but if yours sells it with skin, you might want to ask them to remove it. Cut the
fish into pieces of roughly the same thickness. I’ll cut the belly off, and check in between
the thick part (that we usually refer to as the loin) and the belly for pin bones. My
fishmonger got most of them out, but I did find a couple and I want to remove them. The
belly usually has a lot of the bloodline (that’s the brown flesh) and I prefer to trim it,
but you don’t have to. I’ll cut the belly into 2 pieces and the loin into 2 pieces as
well. Sprinkle them with salt on both sides, but use only half, or even a third of the
salt you’d normally use on fillets this size. Miso is very salty, so we need to compensate
for that. Coat the fish in marinade and dump into a zip lock bag with all the remaining
marinade. You can certainly do this in any non-reactive container. Squeeze the air out,
zip it up, and put in the fridge for at least 6 hours and up to 3 days.
The next day, remove as much marinade as you can through the bag and then dry the fish
very thoroughly on paper towels. Be diligent. If you leave too much marinade on, the fish
will burn. Place the fish on a foiled lined metal baking sheet. Note that one side of
the fish is white and pretty and the other side is brown and ugly. We want to start cooking
brown side up, so that after we flip the fish, it ends up pretty white side up. Some of my
pieces are so skinny, I don’t think I’ll be flipping them so I’ll start them pretty
side up. If this is all too confusing, don’t worry about it. Just cook the damn fish. It’s
not like you are running a restaurant.
Turn on the broiler and wait a couple of minutes for the element to get hot. The rack in my
oven only goes so high, so if I want to get a little closer to the flame, I use an inverted
baking sheet as a riser. This gives me better browning. Place the fish under the broiler
and cook for 3 to 4 minutes or until the fish browns. Watch closely. Because sable is so
fatty and because marinade contains sugar, it can quickly go from brown to burnt.
It looks like I have good color on the first side. Let’s see if the thin pieces are done.
You know... they are almost there, but I think they can handle a bit of browning on the other
side. So I guess I’ll flip them after all. Careful with flipping. It’s a very fragile
fish so it helps to use both the tongs and the spatula. Let’s pop them back in for
just for a couple of minutes and then we’ll take the little ones out.
Now my little ones flake very easily and we can take them out. The big ones need a couple
more minutes, but I want them to be a bit further from the flame since they are pretty
brown already. So let’s remove the baking sheet I am using as a riser, and give them
2 more minutes. Now we are done. See how easily it pulls apart. With sable you want to err
on the side of overcooking. I know this sounds like blasphemy, but trust me, it’s one fish
that tastes best completely cooked through. If the fish is plenty brown on both sides,
but doesn’t flake yet, turn off the broiler, set your oven to 400F and cook in the middle
of the oven until the fish flakes, checking every couple of minutes.
Serve on rice, drizzled with a soy reduction. The soy reduction link is in the description
below the video. Yes, this sauce is worth making not only for this dish. After my trip
to Japan 7 years ago, I don’t think my fridge has ever been without it. My kids call it
the magic sauce.
This is such a luxurious dish. It’s like foie gras of the sea.
I often hear from people that they couldn’t find “black cod”, so they used regular
cod in this recipe. That’s a mistake. This recipe relies on using a very fatty fish.
If you can’t find sable, your best bet is salmon. Just keep in mind that sable tastes
best completely cooked through, but salmon tastes best a bit undercooked. So I would
pull the salmon off the heat when the center is still translucent.
Here are more thought provoking culinary videos for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.