Season Kitchen · Technique

Crisp salmon skin, properly: the full method

Salmon is Britain's favourite fish by a distance, and crisp skin is the thing everyone wants from it and most people never get. The method is short. Most of it happens before the pan.

Start at the counter

The enemy is moisture. Buy fresh if you can - fillets marked "defrosted" or "previously frozen" release more water when they cook. Crisp skin is still possible with them; it's just working against you.

Dry it like you mean it

Pat the skin hard with kitchen roll. If you have an hour or two, put the fillets on a plate in the fridge, uncovered, skin side up - fridge air is dry, and it will finish what the paper started. Take them out 15 to 20 minutes before cooking, and pat them again.

Season at the last minute. Salt draws moisture out of the skin, so seasoning ahead undoes the drying you just did.

The pan, and the oil

Steel - the Season Tri-Ply Stainless Steel Frying Pan is built for exactly this heat. Cast iron gets hot enough, but it keeps a memory: the oil left in its surface means tomorrow's pancakes can taste faintly of today's fish. Heat the pan before the oil goes in, then add a shallow film - no more. Too much oil makes skin leathery rather than crisp. Vegetable oil, not olive; olive burns before it reaches the temperature this needs. Shimmering, not smoking.

The cook

Skin side down, and press each fillet flat with a slotted turner for the first ten seconds - the Season Stainless Steel or Silicone Slotted Turner is thin enough to press and lift without wrecking what you're making. The skin wants to buckle away from the heat, and flat contact is what builds an even crust. Then leave it alone. The skin is rendering its own fat and forming a crust that will release itself when it's ready. Prodding is what tears it.

After a few minutes, when the skin is deeply golden, turn the fillet and give the flesh side thirty seconds. That's all. Off the heat, the residual warmth carries it through to just cooked - tender, not chalky. A thick fillet gets rolled briefly onto each side first - ten seconds a side - then out.