Around the Kitchen Table - Blackened Salmon

Everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table. And happy to have you here today. It's a lovely Wednesday in Florida. The sun is shining, although it has been really, really windy. But you know, I can't complain too much because people from north will throw things at me. But other than that, Susan, how you doing?

I'm good. And I'm looking at ice everywhere in the, in the harbor. So there's chunks of ice and there's snow on top of the ice and everything is blue and white. So in that respect, it's pretty. So yeah, I would, I would, you know, keep it, keep it simple when you talk about Florida.

Keep it on the down low. You know, Lisa is going back tomorrow. She's flying home for a few days and this usually she misses it. She just manages to miss all the really bad weather when she goes. But this time it's looking like it's going to be a little bit chilly for her.

And when is she going? Today?

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow? It's going to be 3 degrees.

Yeah, isn't that a shame?

Oh man, I don't know. You know what? That's the time for her to go. If you want to stay in Florida.

Yep. That's what I'm thinking. And you know, and I have my show on Friday and I was trying to come up with a good name for it. So I called it Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

I saw that. I saw that. You know, I have to say something which is going to take you completely by surprise. But you know, it just occurred to me today that week after week after week after week we do these shows and I'm here and I'm putting together my slideshows or whatever, but you are out there, you're preparing your spending the money on these wonderful foods, whether it's crab or shrimp or fine chocolates or this or that, you're doing that every single week. And I just, you know, I mentioned it once before to you, but I just want to say thank you for that because that's really, you know, I appreciate that and I know our audience does.

Well, thank you. I wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun, for one, and number two is we do get to eat the byproducts of this. Today, I'm only making one piece of salmon because it's going to be my lunch for afterwards because tonight Lisa's having a fillet. This is going to be lunch today.

Nice. There's always that— once a week you actually have— well, probably more than once a week, every day, but you have something really special.

Yep, once a week, you know, and it is earlier now, so a lot of times I will not cook it fully through, which is a good thing too, because if you are entertaining or if you're busy and can't really get to prepare something ahead of time, being able to set it up in advance like this is a real time saver. And this salmon is actually a perfect example of this. While it is a very, very simple dish to make, It's something that you could do. Say you don't want to have that frying fishy smell in the house. When your guests come, you want to give it plenty of time to air out or to refresh. This is something you could do in the morning. You could do well before the party. You could lay it out on a sheet pan, get it ready, and then just pop it in the oven before your guests come. Even the sauce— the sauce takes minutes to make. It's something easily prepared in advance. So, you know, it's not a bad thing doing these shows at 12 o'clock because it'll help give you the idea of what you can do in your own home, too.

Yeah, no, simple is good, and I see just a couple of ingredients in front of you. And today I had, like I told you, some major dental work, and so I don't have my, you know, a presentation for us prepared, but there's so much to talk about. And we were talking in the green room in the green room about salmon and things like that. So where do you want to start us off?

Well, let's talk a little bit about sourcing your fish and sourcing salmon. Now, I'm going to tell you something that will probably shock— I know it shocked you when I said it, and it shocks most people when I tell them this— I did not like salmon at all. I prepared it most of my career as a chef, and I tried to disguise it in many ways to like it, and I would not eat it.

Tell us again how you could not like salmon.

I don't know. It got to the point where it had this kind of fishy, different fishy flavor to me that I just was not fond of. I'm thinking it's the oils in it that did it to me. Maybe because I've been taking a lot more fish oils and different things that I don't find it as offensive. I've had made regular salmon, and it's just something about it just never settled with me. It was even the color. I wasn't real thrilled with the color, and then when it cooked, it got lighter, or it just never held it. I know— and Lisa likes salmon. Again, I like coconut. We don't eat coconut because she doesn't like coconut, but she likes salmon, so we have salmon. I've been looking for salmon because one of the big problems with sourcing seafood is where it comes from. Most people eat Atlantic salmon. Atlantic salmon is not supposed to be very good for you. I've read articles about it. It has a lot of properties it picks up in the water, and it was listed one time as one of those food items that you should not eat on a regular basis, that once a month is enough and any more than that is too much. So we have people going out looking for salmon because they think they're doing something good for their health with all those omega-3s, and when in fact, you know, it's not really necessarily that good for you because of the other properties you're ingesting with it.

Do you think the answer would have to be an expensive mail-order solution for a particular type of salmon? What type is— what do you recommend?

Anytime you read about fish, the big buzzword, and again, now you're going to have to be very careful because it is a buzzword, is wild-caught. You see that on— and I see that on crab. I always look for crab. "Wild caught," and then if you look closely, it'll say, "Wild caught in Vietnam," or "Wild caught in Indonesia." I don't want that crab meat. I want crab meat out of US waters. I want Gulf or I want Atlantic crabs. I want crabs that I'm used to, and I know that are being sourced in clean, fairly clean waters, and sourced by people that I can trust. I don't know where these other fish are coming from. When it comes to something like fish and salmon. Salmon— you'll see a lot of fish being farm-raised now. Farm-raised fish, of course, we're trying to feed the world, so this is why they're raising fish that way, but it's also faster, it's less expensive, it's easier, and the waters are not always the best that they come out of. They don't clean them as well. They're just replacing stock after stock of these fish, and the natural properties that occur in water aren't having an opportunity opportunity to really keep it clean and to keep it healthy. I kind of stay away from anything that says farm-raised on it. Then the Atlantic, while we've loved the Atlantic for seafood, more and more it's becoming not as reliable as I would like it to be, especially in the northern Atlantic, especially for salmon. When I look for salmon, I look for anything coming out of the Northwest. I say the Northwest because the waters that they traverse generally run out to the Pacific. Salmon always go out to the ocean and they come back to spawn. It's a freshwater fish. It's kind of a strange fish, but anything in the Alaskan area, the Canadian Northwest, Washington State, anything coming from there, and that usually means coho, sockeye, and I know there's some other varieties, but they just don't come to me offhand.

I would imagine that they ship to the— around the country to, you know, the fishmongers, to better fish stores. I would get— I never thought of asking or looking for that, but I think I will. I would imagine Whole Foods probably has a good selection of that too. Yeah, I don't know.

Whole Foods should. I generally don't buy seafood or meat there because it is just so expensive, and I have been disappointed on times when I have bought products there that just really weren't as tasty you would think they would be, but they were a little disappointing. I used to shop at Wegmans a lot, and Wegmans was always really reliable for that kind of things. Salmon, when you went out of Atlantic salmon or farm-raised salmon, the price almost tripled. It's insane. I look for sources that aren't quite as expensive because, honestly, we want to eat better, but if we can't afford to eat better, What are we doing? So, you know, I have found that Costco lately has been a great source for me, you know, and I don't always advocate big box stores because you have to support your local economy too. And if you have a good fishmonger locally, you know, you go right to them. But for me, when I go there and I buy it, I found a really good coho salmon which is from It's wild-caught from the Northwest, and surprisingly, I like it.

That's a great— that's a really great— I mean, if that's the— that's probably the top information for the show, for the whole show today, is to think about Costco and to look on the label for, you know, wild-caught in the Northwest. I mean, you've It just changed my life with salmon.

Yeah, I'm telling you. Once you try it, if you like salmon and you try this— and this was not real expensive. I honestly don't remember what I paid for it. It was probably more than the mahi and the grouper and the snapper that I bought there, but it, again, is a fish that looked to me like it was sourced safely.

Do you buy it frozen?

Yes, it comes frozen. It comes IQF. Okay. Which for those of you that don't know what that means, is individually quick frozen, IQF. And this is how it's packed, and you get a big bag, and I forget how many were in there, so you can take them out as you need them. You see this has got some skin on it. Frozen, kept frozen, comes out, you thaw it in a matter of a few hours. You can thaw it overnight if you want. I like— when I get frozen fish, I try not to let it stay thawed too long because it'll start to get a little soft on you. Anything frozen, when you freeze it, it starts to break down the molecular structure of meats. You know, with meat, you know, it changes it a little bit. With fish, it changes it too. So I let this defrost just for about 4 hours, or you can take it out in the morning, put it in the refrigerator, and it'll probably be fine by the time you come home. But this, yeah, comes in a— I think it's a 2-pound or 3-pound bag.. These are generally anywhere from 6 to 8 ounce servings, which is a nice serving of fish for you.

I mean, looks great. It's tightly vacuum-packed, and I'm definitely going to take a trip and try them.

Yeah, so look for that if you're out. I know Trader Joe's has some things that are nice too, but again, look where the fish is coming from. I see a lot of cod from Russian Federated Ships, and I know they ship— they, they fish right off of our Atlantic coast. I mean, they're close enough to the US, they're right out there, so it should be good fish. I just don't know exactly how safe their ships are, or what kind of state of the art. So I have to look more into that before I start buying, because I would like some cod. But a lot of times, you know, like I said, seafood from that Northwest region is usually pretty safe. Halibut's a good buy. But this, like I said, the salmon was priced right. I was surprised at the mild flavor. It still has all the properties and it stays a nice bright red when you cook it. Right now I'm just going to show you real quick how to skin something off. You could cook it with the skin on, and a lot of times the skin will almost come off of it when you go under it to pick with a spatula to get it out of the pan, but I don't like to take a chance. I don't want to see the skin Some people eat it, that's fine. I wouldn't serve my guests that, and I don't really eat it. Not that it's bad for you, it's just aesthetically as a chef, that's how I was trained.

Yeah, I mean, when I cook my salmon and I sear it and then I finish it in the oven, it just naturally, as I take forkfuls of the salmon, the skin naturally separates.

Yeah, it comes off, and a lot of times when you go under it, it'll come right off for you too. It's not something I would do as I'm serving it. It's either if it's not off before, they're going to get it however it is. This is pretty easy to do. Let me switch cameras real quick. What you do when you have a salmon like this— now I already started it, but the skin will be here. I like to come under here a little bit and just work the knife in, work the knife in, and just lift a little bit of the skin off.

You need a super sharp knife.

Yeah, I think generally, you know, it'll be the sharpest knife in your kitchen. A boning knife is usually good, but I use a French knife for everything. So then as you go under it with your knife, you're going to grab a hold of the skin. Okay, okay, you're going to take your knife, you're going to grab a hold of the skin, and you're going to put your knife down to the cutting board as low as you can on the skin angle, and then you're just going to cut. You're going to hold on to that skin. And as you hold on to the skin, you're just pulling.

Oh, you make it look so easy. Look at how clean that is. Wow, that is unbelievable. You get a prize for that.

That just takes a little bit of practice, but the whole trick again is when you're pulling the skin, see how this knife— I'm not cutting straight down, I'm on an angle and I'm pulling the skin towards the knife.

I see, you were pulling the skin. I didn't get that at first.

As I'm doing it, I'm pulling the skin. I'm not really cutting into it. That's how you do it. That is the salmon. I did dry it off a little bit before. You see how nice and colorful it is.

Nice.

You still have a little bit, but that's not bad. From this point, I'm going to season it. When I blacken things, I'll either sprinkle it on or I'll put it on a plate like this and just push it in. Alright, let me turn the pan on because I want the pan to get hot while I'm doing this. And that's pretty much it.

So is that seasoning that you just buy at the store?

This is actually Paul Prudhomme's Cajun Magic.

I was going to mention Paul Prudhomme. I have some of his seasonings.

Cajun Magic for fish. You know, he makes them for chicken, He makes them for fish. I always say, why reinvent the wheel? I mean, there's people that just their whole life is seasonings. I mean, as a chef, I am about seasonings, but there's people that want to combine and mix their own spices, and that's wonderful. I don't really do that because I don't cook things like that that often, so I wanted to be simple.. I want it to be easy. I want to enjoy it. I have spices I can trust. I always recommend Montreal. I love that for meats. This is great for fish. We enjoy it. It's not got a lot of heat to it, so it's not going to kick your butt when you eat it. It's got enough that it's going to add some flavor. Again, the more you put on, the heavier you make it, the more spicy it's going to be. You can always put whatever you want to use your own, any brand.

Yeah, and it doesn't look like you put a whole lot on there. I usually put so much on there to completely cover it, and that's on the light side now.

You can, you can use as much as you want. You know, I'm not a big, you know, spicy heat person, and you know, neither is Lisa. We just like the flavor of it. It changes it a little bit. It gives it a good taste, and it adds some color to the dish too. A lot of times I'll use spices like this, and I think I talked about it a little bit with the shrimp and the étouffée, was getting some color into the shrimp. While we're doing this, let's throw a few comments up. Kristen Dryzel says, "I always let the skin help keep the moisture in." Kristen, when I roast the fish, I'm always going to put a little water in the bottom of the pan with it. For me, that helps keep the moisture in. Whatever works for you is fine. If you want to take the skin, leave the skin on, that's fine, too.

We have one from— oh, yes, from Candy, who's here from Tokyo. Can you use a whitefish for this recipe, Chef?

You sure can. You can use any fish that that you like. Just be gentle with it if you're going to pan fry it. Anything that you can turn. Let me get a spatula while I'm saying that. Just so you don't break the fish up. You can use a fillet. You can use anything you like with it. Let's go to the pan. I'm only going to put in just a little bit of oil. It's going to smoke because the pan is really hot. I was afraid I'm going to set the fire alarm off, so I'm looking around. I did that once in a school.

Oh, I just did it last week. I made pizza and it, you know, went over the pizza stone.

I was blackening some fish, showing— I think it was salmon for a blackened salmon salad, and I'm talking, my back's to him, and I hear people coughing, and I turn around, and the room was full of smoke, and people from the school were running in. It was a high school. They thought there was a fire, and I was so embarrassed.

Now, that's a good point. Do you— could you— would you prepare that blackened and put it in a salad? Blackened salmon in a salad?

Absolutely. And you can also, if you don't want to go around cutting it later or want to take it quicker, you can cut it into pieces. Like, I have taken a salmon like this and cut it into little chunks, blackened the one side, and done— cooked them exactly like this, finished them in the oven, and used them as hors d'oeuvres, as little blackened salmon bites.

Now, how are you Making it in terms of the inside, medium rare, rare?

It's how you like fish. I like my salmon to be all the way done. I pretty much like my fish all the way done, but not— it's that gentle line of being cooked completely without drying out. So that's something you'll have. The first time I made this, I did cook it a little too long and it was a little dry. So the last time I made it, I cut the time down by about 7 minutes. So I would say once you do this to it and you want to just leave it alone like that for a couple minutes. Get under it. Let's turn it. Oh, nice. There's a nice color. So that's what I want. Now I'm just going to let the back sear, the bottom sear real briefly. And that's just to get it a little bit done. And that's all I'm going to do. All right, then I'm going to take it and I'm going to put it in a— on a pan that's got water in it. And I'm going to put this in the pan, then I'm going to put a little bit of water in it, and then I'm going to put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 12 to 15 minutes.

Okay, now tell me again why the water? So it doesn't dry out?

Yeah, the water is going to help it keep moist. Okay, and if you want to You can even take a little bit of olive oil and just drizzle a little bit of olive oil on it when you put it in that baking pan. Not that you really need it, it's an oily fish, but that will help keep it a little moist too. Whenever I put fish in the oven, I put a little bit of water in the pan. I use the philosophy as they came from the ocean, let's let them cook in a little water too. That helps it keep moisture You can see—

wow, that looks great.

Let me turn it.

That looks good. What a good tip. I mean, that's again a life-changing tip for me.

Okay, so we're just going to put this right here for now, and now we're going to make a really simple sauce for it. I'm going to take a saucepan here, wipe it out. Okay, we're going to heat this up. Very simple. I'm going to use some cream. Now, if you're adverse to using cream, if you don't want to use heavy cream but you like Greek yogurt, you could make a very simple cold sauce for this. You can go a bunch of different ways. What I like to do is I want to complement this with some kind of a sauce that will balance the flavors. That'll kind of give me that, "Mmm, really," when you put it in your mouth, the different textures and flavors combine, and it's a party in your mouth kind of a thing. That sounds good. If you don't want to use cream, but let's say you like nonfat Greek yogurt, take some nonfat Greek yogurt, and you can either put some cheese crumbles in it, or you can put some fresh dill in it, or some fresh tarragon, or some other flavor that you really enjoy, or if you just want to use a little ranch dressing. Say you went this far but you're just not feeling making a sauce or anything. Anything like that is a wonderful flavor variation to this and will give you those combinations that you're looking for. We're going to make a little bit of a gorgonzola sauce now. Again, very simple. I get the pan a little hot. Add my cream in. I'm going to get that light boil.

So that looks like about 1/2 cup.

For 2, I would say about 1/2 cup is good. This may be a little bit much, but it's hard to do a light amount of cream in here. I'm just going to give it up there. I'm going to turn it off a little bit. I'm going to add my Gorgonzola to it.

Oh, come on, add more.

Garnish it with it. One thing about this is you have to be careful with the amount of gorgonzola because gorgonzola, or if you want to use blue cheese, is a wonderful thing. But too much of a wonderful thing is just too much flavor. It starts to be too pronounced. You want this sauce to be good and you want it to be a little bit delicate. You saw how fast The pan was hot. I just reduced the cream just a little bit, just enough to make it thick. I have the Gorgonzola in here. It looks really nice. What I'm going to do now to serve it is when I go to serve it, say I take these out of the oven, this is on the side. You can make this up ahead of time. That's fine. If it gets too thick, just add a few drops of white wine or water. Or a little bit more cream into it. Then I'm going to serve it with just a nice amount, just so you have enough to dip it in. I'm going to garnish it with— you can use green onions, you can use chopped greens. I used a red kale the other day. It was very pretty.

I just can't believe it. That is a weeknight meal that looks like a Saturday night company dinner. That's 3 ingredients.

3 ingredients. Right.

Unbelievable.

Now granted, it has to go in the oven for about 15 minutes. That we didn't do. But that's it. And so if you want to prepare these ahead of time, if you are having people over and like I said, you want to air the house out completely, You still get some of it from the oven, but you won't have it in the air when you do sauté something, especially at that heat. It does permeate a little bit more. I would have had the fan on, but I didn't want the noise while we're talking.

I missed what you said. I didn't fully understand what you said. You said put it in the oven. You said if you want to make it during the day.

Yeah. Let's say you got 8 people coming over tonight, or 4 people, or if it's just the 2 of you. You know, when you get home from work, you're going to be tired, and all you want to do is take that pan out of the refrigerator, put a little water in it, turn the oven on, preheat the oven, and pop it in. Or if you're having a dinner party with 8 or 10 people, or if you're having a buffet, this is also wonderful buffet item. I mean, you could put this in a nice little pan and set it out and replenish it as it goes empty. You could cut these into smaller pieces.. It really is a very tasty— and people see salmon and people think money right away, like you've spent some money on them. Alright, so it— like I said, if you buy this type of coho salmon, it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg, and it's going to have a lot of flavor. And you know, if you like to eat it— I don't know if there's salmon sushi, we should ask Kandi since she's here, but I'm sure they do use it for that. I mean, if you like it a little people on the rare side, experiment with it. Oh, I love mine—

I usually have mine medium rare.

Well, then you know, I probably would not even put this in the oven. I would just let it cook a little bit longer in the sauté pan. If you don't like it well, well done and you like it medium rare, just leave it in that pan for just a little bit longer to let the bottom side cook a little bit more. It will be done. If you need to pop it in the oven, you'll have to gauge how rare you want it., but you can probably get it done enough just in the pan.

Yeah, I am totally making that for dinner tonight.

So it's a fun restaurant-style dish that you would go out and you would probably pay $20 for it easy. If you're feeling real adventurous, like I made this the other night and I cut up a little lobster tail and I sautéed the lobster meat just till it was barely done, took it out, made my sauce, threw it in the sauce, heated it up to finish the cooking process, and then I served it with the lobster on top of it. So one—

go ahead.

No, one little 3-ounce, one little tail that you might pay, you know, $4 or $5 for at the store is plenty.

Well, you know, I also think it's interesting because, you know, we, unlike European countries, we don't make a whole lot of sauces here. When you do something like this, it adds dimension to cooking, and when it's easy to do on a weeknight, it really is another layer of deliciousness.

Like I said, if you don't want to go the route of the heavy cream, you're trying to stay healthy, I understand that. That's fine. In fact, now that I am dairy allergic, I have to start looking for other sources. I mean, you could very easily take some— I mean, I couldn't because I'm still dairy allergic, but you could take some nice yogurt, and a coleslaw with this would be wonderful, a coleslaw a little thick. Then I might just serve a dollop of it on top, maybe with some fresh herbs or some spring onions, a little tomato on the side. Anything else, think colors, think pretty peppers if you like it, but just some other color. They wouldn't have to be included in the sauce, but just as a garnish that you could you could cut up and eat with the fish. Think of what other flavors might go good with the fish. I served this with asparagus one night and potatoes, and then another night with rice and green beans. It'll go with anything that you serve it with.

Yeah. It just is a great recipe. One last thing, I just want to say how I'm really glad you just casually said, "I take it with the You know, I think that's great to keep in mind. It's just a little thing, but I think in this case maybe more is not more.

Yeah, you know, I've made sauces where I thought it would be too much, and Gorgonzola has such a pronounced flavor. Same thing with blue cheese. Like, this would be really good with blue cheese too, and I generally have both in the house, so one or the other. I'll use them on salads, either one or the other, and in a sauce. You saw how quick. You can use half-and-half if you don't have heavy cream. It may not be as thick, but it'll come up. Anything that you have in the house that you want to use, and again, with the cole sauce, it still would be wonderful. You can have a lot of fun with this. It's easy. It's inexpensive. Buy a little pack of fresh dill or fresh thyme not thyme, fresh tarragon or just like I said, a green. It's just the flavor or add another seasoning into the sauce. You can have fun with it and make it easy.

And I have to say one last thing. Looking at it on the white dish, imagine a table with a white tablecloth, all white dishes and accessories and even flowers and then It's kind of a composition. The table can be a composition with that beautiful salmon on it. Love it.

This would look great on a black dish too, like your tall was talking about. The color, the red would pop, the white would pop, the green, it would all pop. So I do have to get some nice black dishes because, you know, you've inspired me with that, especially for taking pictures to make them look different. Because, you know, as a chef, I can be a little boring sometimes because I like to serve on white.

That's why you have me here. It's true, the red and the black, I mean, that's drama.

That would look really good. I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. We've got people— MJ is in the house, Richard O is in the house, Candy. I'm glad you came by to watch the show today, and I hope you try this. Like I said, you could do this with tuna. You could do it with swordfish. You could do it with whitefish. With whitefish, it's going to be a little more precarious, and you have to be a little more careful with a fillet, with a thin fillet fish. Any fish that's a little on the thick side, you can blacken it and have a good time with it.

Great dish, Chef. Thank you so much, Chef Dennis Littley.

Well, thank you, and I hope you have a good week, and we'll see you again around the kitchen table.

See ya.

Bye-bye.