How to Prevent White Salmon From Falling Out
As a child, catfish was one of my favorite foods – in fact, one of the few fish that I liked. As I got older, lived and traveled outside the South, I began to study (and appreciate) other types of fin food, but it took me a while to appreciate the salmon. It tasted so radically different from catfish that it took several years living in the Pacific Northwest for it to catch on to my taste.
It would be unfair to blame albumin – the white substance you sometimes see oozing from fish – as the only reason for my hesitation with salmon, but it definitely didn’t help.
Albumin – not to be confused with protein, egg white, which also contains albumin – is a liquid protein found in raw fish, including (and most prominently) salmon. As the fish cooks, the protein curls up and the muscles contract, pushing the semi-solid white albumin onto the surface of the dinner. Albumin is completely safe to consume, but it looks pretty ugly.
There are two ways to reduce the amount of albumin in salmon. You can cook it carefully, at a lower, slower temperature, as a sudden increase in temperature can quickly shorten the fish meat, causing the albumin bundle to fall to the surface. You can also do most of the skin moxibustion with the side down, which will not only keep the albumin from the top of the fillet, but also leave the skin delicious and crispy.
But what if you want to grill salmon? What if you don’t have the time or patience to wait for a slow-roasted dinner? In such cases, you can turn to the magic of the pickle . A quick pickle will not only give your fish a firmer, firmer texture and better taste, but it will also prevent coarse white matter from staining the salmon. According to Cook’s Illustrated , “Salt partially dissolves the muscle fibers near the surface of the meat, so they freeze when cooked without contracting or squeezing out the albumin.” Cook’s Illustrated recommends a quick 10 minute soak in a nine percent solution (1 tablespoon of salt in a glass of water), but you can also use a 15 minute dry brine with one part sugar and two parts salt and see very similar results. (I’ve been drying my salmon for a while now and completely forgot about albumin until someone was surprised at the lack of “white matter” in my fish.)
Updated at 11:45 am on 05.24.21 to clarify the difference between albumin and albumin.