The Michelin-Star Way to Make Salmon at Home
Professional chef Adrienne Cheatham demonstrates how to level up and get restaurant-quality dinners at home with her brioche-crusted salmon recipe.
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00:00I'm Adrienne Cheatham.
00:01I'm a professional chef.
00:02And today, I'm going to show you how to make restaurant
00:04quality salmon at home.
00:06We're going to go over some techniques
00:08to take your salmon game to the next level.
00:10Save yourself from dry, boring fish.
00:13This is restaurant brioche crusted salmon 101.
00:17There are some really easy ways to get restaurant
00:20quality fish dishes at home that don't require a ton of work.
00:24My favorite is making this brioche
00:27crusted filet of salmon.
00:28One of the biggest challenges with cooking salmon at home
00:31is overcooking it.
00:33This recipe helps buffer the heat
00:35and makes it a little bit more forgiving.
00:38You don't have to worry as much because the bread will give you
00:41a lot of flavor contrast.
00:43It'll give you some of that buttery richness
00:45to make up if the fish is a little bit dry.
00:47This is something that we used to do in restaurants
00:49when we were cooking for large parties.
00:51It's crunchy.
00:52It's delicious.
00:53And that is the beauty of this particular technique.
00:59Your fish should always be cold until you're ready to cook it.
01:03You never want to let your fish fluctuate in temperature
01:06because that can contribute to it breaking down and spoiling
01:09a lot faster.
01:10This is straight out of the refrigerator.
01:13I like to season my fish a couple of hours
01:16before I'm going to work on it.
01:18The seasoning will start to seep in to the fish itself.
01:22It'll also pull out some of the excess liquid
01:25and help the flesh kind of tighten up a little bit.
01:28It's just one of those pro tips that help make things
01:30just a little bit better than you would normally do.
01:33I'm going to go ahead and pop this salmon in the fridge
01:35until I'm ready to start cooking dinner.
01:40I like to use brioche because it's crisp and light
01:43when you cook it up, but it also has a little bit of sweetness.
01:46You can literally change this out for any bread.
01:50I've done this with sourdough, pumpernickel, whole wheat bread,
01:53sliced white sandwich bread.
01:55The best thing about using a whole loaf that's not sliced
01:59is that you can determine how thick the breading crust
02:02is going to be.
02:03This recipe is also a great way to use up some bread
02:07that's getting stale or not so fresh.
02:09So now that I have my two beautiful slices of brioche cut,
02:13I'm going to place my salmon directly on top
02:16with what would be the skin side facing down.
02:19It's the flatter side of the two,
02:20so I don't have to worry about the bread not making contact
02:24with the uneven top of the salmon.
02:26You don't need to put anything on there
02:28to hold the fish to the bread.
02:30When you start to cook it, it will release that white stuff
02:33that you see coming out of salmon.
02:35That's called albumen.
02:36It's similar to like an egg white.
02:37It's just a protein,
02:39and it will make it stick to the bread itself
02:42without having to add anything else.
02:44Now I'm just lining my knife up with the edge of the salmon
02:47and I'm trimming the bread right there.
02:49Again, cutting right alongside the bread.
02:52The fish is seasoned, it's ready to go.
02:54If you're going to cook it right away,
02:56you can let it sit out for up to 20 minutes
02:59to come to room temperature.
03:00But if you want to wait for an hour or so
03:03before you cook it,
03:03just go ahead and pop it in the fridge.
03:05It is time to start cooking our fish.
03:10This is a really cool process that I absolutely love
03:14because it is very forgiving.
03:15We're going to start in the saute pan,
03:18but we're going to finish in the oven.
03:19So the fish itself will get a very gentle
03:22kind of cook around it.
03:23I'm going to start on low heat.
03:25I'm using a little bit of neutral oil
03:27and let that slowly heat up.
03:29Add the butter now and just let that kind of melt.
03:32The butter is more for flavor.
03:33The oil is really going to help us facilitate even browning
03:37and it'll also help raise the smoke temperature
03:40and help us minimize the risk of burning.
03:42I'm using a stainless steel pan,
03:44but you could use any oven safe pan.
03:47The butter is bubbling now
03:48and you can see it starting to turn a little bit
03:51of a darker golden color.
03:52I don't want to go too high too fast
03:54because I don't want to burn the brioche.
03:56I want to give it a chance to absorb the fat
03:59and slowly start to get golden brown, delicious and crispy.
04:03I'm carefully placing my salmon
04:05with the bread side down into the pan.
04:08The butter is bubbly.
04:10Give it a little shake.
04:11Gradually increase the heat from like medium low
04:15to barely medium
04:16and make sure you're shaking your pan
04:19occasionally to make sure that it's not sticking.
04:21Shaking it in a pan also helps distribute the heat evenly
04:25and you don't get a dark spot here and a light spot here.
04:27It's looking GBD.
04:29Butter is delicious,
04:30but I love a little bit of aromatic flavor.
04:33So I'm going to add a couple sprigs of thyme to the fat
04:36and one clove of crushed garlic
04:38just to add a little bit more aromatic flavor
04:42to this dish while it's cooking.
04:44You can see that the bread has kind of pressed down
04:47and condensed under the weight of the salmon.
04:50Flip it now so that we don't cook it
04:52all the way on the bread side
04:53and then we're going to pop it in the oven.
04:55And don't worry if you get a couple of light spots,
04:57you can always flip it back over
04:59and brown it right before you take it out of the pan.
05:02If I wanted to do this ahead of time
05:04before I have guests coming over,
05:05instead of flipping it and putting this pan in the oven,
05:09I would take them out of the pan and put them on a tray.
05:12That way when my guests come over,
05:13I can put this whole tray in the oven
05:15for five to seven minutes.
05:17Say you have 50 guests, just brown the bread,
05:20put your fish on a tray, pop it in the refrigerator,
05:23and then right before the party starts,
05:25get it back in the oven
05:26so your fish is freshly cooked for your guests.
05:28I have my oven preheated to 350.
05:31That will help cook everything,
05:33but we're not going to go so hot
05:34that we risk burning the bread.
05:36Cooking time depends on the thickness of your fish.
05:39These are very thick,
05:40so I'm going to check them at four to five minutes,
05:43but I have a feeling they might take closer to seven.
05:46The fish has been in the oven for about five minutes.
05:49Let's check it.
05:50It looks like it actually might be done.
05:52So there's a couple of ways to look at your fish
05:55to see if it's done.
05:56You see this white protein?
05:58If that's starting to come out,
05:59your fish might be cooked all the way
06:01and the protein is starting to leach out.
06:03It doesn't mean our fish is overcooked,
06:04but we want to take a look inside.
06:06So I'm going to use the corner of the spatula
06:08just to barely open up one of the flakes.
06:11We can see right in the center,
06:14You don't see any of that deep pink translucent look,
06:16but it's not overcooked, and that's a great thing.
06:19Another way to check if you have a cake tester at home
06:22is to insert it straight into the center of the salmon,
06:26give it a couple seconds and touch it to your bottom lip
06:28or just under your bottom lip.
06:30If it feels really, really hot,
06:32you know your fish is overcooked.
06:33If it feels warm, you're perfect.
06:35So when you're inserting your cake tester,
06:38sometimes you can feel the cake coming out
06:41Sometimes you can feel the cake tester
06:44breaking through each piece of sinew,
06:46which is the membrane that holds the muscle groups together.
06:49That's a really good indicator that your fish is very rare.
06:53I do not need to put this back in the oven
06:55because it is already about mid-well.
06:57There's also residual heat in the pan
06:59that will help carry over cook.
07:01So our salmon is cooked.
07:02It's time to get it out of the pan and onto the plate.
07:05I'm just going to serve it
07:06with a little simple salad on the side.
07:08I mean, to me, this is very simple in terms of technique,
07:12but so delicious, very high impact,
07:15and it has that wow factor.
07:17And this is how I make restaurant quality salmon at home.
07:21Ooh, look at that crust.
07:29The fish is tender.
07:31It's flaky.
07:32It's not overcooked and dry.
07:34The bread gives you the crust on the top,
07:36some light fluffiness in the center.
07:38And because it's absorbed that flavor
07:40from the butter and the thyme and the garlic,
07:43it's not just plain, boring salmon.
07:45The bread, it'll give you some of that buttery richness
07:47to make up if the fish is a little bit dry.
07:50And that is the beauty of this particular technique.
07:53Cooking salmon at home
07:54does not have to be redundant, dry, and boring.
07:57With just a couple of cool, simple techniques,
08:01you can really up your game
08:02and give yourselves and your guests
08:04an incredible wow factor.