Get Crispy Fish Skin Every Time Without Resorting to Tricks

Fish has a reputation for being difficult to prepare but easier to deal with than many other proteins, especially if you consider speed to be an advantage. The main problems in cooking fish are overcooking it and, if it has skin, making it crispy, and also not tearing the skin when removing the fish from the pan. There are some clever ways to take care of this, but you don’t need them. All you need is a fairly hot pan and plenty of oil.

About those crunchy fish skin tricks

Recently, while scrolling through Instagram, I saw a video where a man claimed that parchment paper is the key to “the crunchiest fish skin”. I googled a bit to see if I could find a rationale for this claim and method, but all I found was information on how parchment helps to make the skin crispy without sticking to the pan. It made sense, but I still wasn’t convinced it was necessary, so I bought a few steelhead filets with skin on, dried them for 15 minutes, then rinsed and dried as thoroughly as I could with paper towels. (This is important: wet fish will splatter and splatter, and excess water can cause the fish to steam rather than fry.) frying pan made of stainless steel. a frying pan with a piece of parchment paper and a little olive oil, and in a hot stainless steel pan with a lot of olive oil.

Method number 1: cooking in a non-stick pan

It doesn’t make sense to add a lot of oil to a non-stick pan (at least in this case), so for my first test, I rubbed the fish on both sides with a little olive oil. Since my non-stick pan is Teflon coated, I didn’t want to heat it too much (my electric burns get hot), so I set the heat to medium, then added the fish, skin side down, and pressed it down. Gently on top to help the skin make contact with the pan and prevent it from curling. Once the edges of the skin were well browned and the fish was mostly opaque, I turned it over and let it fry for another minute before serving it on plates.

Method #2: Cook in a stainless steel saucepan with a piece of parchment paper.

I then tried the parchment paper method as described in the Instagram video above. I added some oil to my stainless steel frying pan, placed a sheet of parchment on top of the oil, rubbed the parchment with a little olive oil, and fried the fish over medium heat in much the same way as I fried the first fish. secondly, be sure to press in the first half minute so that the skin does not curl or shrink. Once the edges of the skin were well browned and the fish was mostly opaque, I turned it over and let it fry for another minute before serving it on plates.

Method #3: Cook in a hot stainless steel pan with plenty of oil.

Finally, I used Daniel Gritzer’s technique and added just enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the stainless steel pan. As with any protein, the key to fighting chopstick aging is to heat the pan enough and leave the food alone for a while. Raw meat will bond to the metal in the pan, and tender fish can tear if you try to move it before it’s cooked long enough to form a crust. But if you add enough oil and heat it enough, the outer layer of proteins will cook so quickly that they won’t stick:

Once cooked, however, proteins are much less likely to bind to the metal. So the key is to cook these superficial proteins so quickly that they are completely transformed before the fish touches the pan. No matter how thin the layer of oil in a pan is, if it’s hot enough, it will do just that.

Gritzer also has a cool trick for checking your oil. It should shimmer and smoke a little, but it can be hard to appreciate if you’re not used to looking for those visual cues. In addition to checking the oil for flickering and lights, you can test it on a piece of fish:

I like to test the water first… or I guess I should say, I like to test the oils. Without releasing the fillet, I lead the fish along the surface of the pan, probing whether it sticks or not. If the pan and oil are hot enough (and in the case of cast iron and carbon steel, if the pan is seasoned enough), the fish should glide like a skater on ice.

If the fish sticks, let the oil heat up a little more and try again. When it slides and slides, you are ready. Once my oil was hot enough, I put the fish in the pan, skin side down, moving away from my body so I wouldn’t splatter myself. I gently pressed the top of the fish with a spatula for about 30 seconds to keep the skin from wrinkling and curling during the first contact, then lowered the heat to medium-low and simmered without stirring until the edges of the skin were browned. well browned and the fish was mostly opaque. I turned it over and let it cook for another minute, then covered it.

All three methods resulted in crispy fish.

I won’t bury the Lede: as you can see in the photo above, all the fish browned just fine. Visually, the skin prepared with a piece of parchment was the most inhomogeneous. It was puckered and blistered in places, which I suspect was due to a heat mismatch caused by the parchment; even with the oil underneath, the paper didn’t have constant contact with the pan, meaning the skin of the fish didn’t have constant contact with the pan. Fish cooked in a non-stick pan was slightly darker than fish cooked on stainless steel, but I had a harder time adjusting the non-stick temperature without the visual cues provided by the oil.

However, one day the fish and its skin were in my mouth, but I could not tell them apart. All skin was crispy and all fish tender and moist. If I had to choose a favorite method, it would be classic stainless steel without parchment. The non-stick coating worked fine, but it was harder to check the temperature, which wasn’t a problem when cooking a single piece of fish, but could be a problem if you need to cook multiple portions. I loved having the oil as an indicator, and cooking fish in a pan without any safety nets or training wheels made me feel wildly accomplished. I would never envy someone who uses a non-stick pan, but knowing how to cook without one will make you a lot more confident in the kitchen.

As for the parchment method, I just don’t see the point. As long as your oil is hot enough—and you test this with the Gritzer test as described above—your fish is in no danger of sticking, and adding a sheet of parchment to the mixture just means you need to get rid of the fatty sheet of fat. parchment. This did not result in the fish being noticeably crispier than the other two methods. So throw away the paper, cure the fish quickly , and grab a stainless steel pan and a bottle of olive oil. As long as your fish is dry, the oil is hot, and your hand is firm, you’ll be cooking crispy restaurant fillets without Teflon or any tricks.