Best Ways To Cook Fish

Best Ways To Cook Fish
BY JOHN O. CARTIER
Q: What processing and cooking technique will give me the best possible fish dinner? A: Your fish can never taste better than when cleaned and cooked near the water it recently inhabited. That’s why the famous wilderness shore lunches are so good. A fish that is freshly caught and cooked in the outdoors has reached its maximum potential for superb eating.

Q: How can I tell when my cooking oil is hot enough to start frying? A: You can heat your oil on medium high until it just begins to smoke, then add fish immediately. A better trick is to drop in a pinch of bread. If it fries instantly, your oil is hot enough.

Q: How can I know when fish is cooked perfectly? A: Expert chefs watch their fish while it’s cooking. They can tell when it’s done by sight and touch. When sautéed, grilled and broiled fish turns golden crisp, it’s usually done. The touch test can prove it. Just press the fish. If the flesh is warm and soft, it’s underdone. If it’s hard and hot, it’s overdone. If it’s springy and firm, it’s perfect.

Q: What causes cleaned fish to deteriorate so quickly? A: Air and water are the culprits in stealing flavor and freshness from your fillets. If you can’t eat your fish the same day it is caught, you should seal the meat. Enclose the fillets in resealable bags, submerge the bags in water up to the seal (this squeezes out all the air), then pinch the seal tight. Or seal them air tight in plastic cling wrap and refrigerate. Never let the bare meat become covered with water from melted ice.
Q: How come smaller fish always taste better than lunkers? A: Because table fare fades fast as age increases in all fish and game. The older the deer the tougher the chops. The older the fish the tougher and less flavorful the fillets. Liken the situation to what happens with sheep. Lamb chops are so good because they’re taken from animals less than one year old when butchered. The smaller fish fillets taste so great because they come from young and therefore tender fish. You will always have better fish dinners if you keep the smaller fish and let the big ones go free.

Q: Is there any kind of rule for recommended portions of fish? A: Recommended serving sizes are based on species and method of cooking. In general, people tend to eat less of fish sautéed or fried than the same species when it’s broiled. A four- to five-ounce serving of fried fish will satisfy most appetites, but it might take a strong eight ounces of the same species if the meat is broiled. That’s because broiled or grilled fish isn’t nearly as filling.

Q: When I fry fish I sometimes find the cooked meat is too greasy. Why does this happen? A: The most important secret to getting perfectly crisp, grease-free fish is to fry just a few pieces at a time. The more you crowd the pan the more you reduce the cooking temperature of the oil. The more you reduce the temperature as you add fillets the more oil they will absorb. Frying fish fast at medium-high temperature keeps the juices in and the grease out.

Q: I’ve read that you should fry fillets for 10 minutes per inch of thickness, turning only once. When I do this the second side is always overdone. Why? A: Because an uncooked piece of fish is cold when you first put it into a pan with hot oil. But it turns hot throughout while its first side is cooking. This means that when you flip the meat over the second side will cook much faster than the first side. You will do much better if you cook the first side six minutes, and the second side four minutes.

Quick Facts On Cooking Fish High-quality fish should be cleaned and cooked, frozen or continually iced as soon as possible after the catch. Most refrigerators hold a temperature of about 40 degrees F. This is not cold enough to retain top quality. It’s a fact that fish held at 32 degrees keeps twice as well as those held at 42 degrees. The quality of your fish dinner depends on maintaining fresh-caught freshness right up to cooking time. There are several tricks to keeping fish as cold as possible in a refrigerator. The bottom of a refrigerator is colder than the top. You can also fill a bottom vegetable bin with crushed ice, thus making the coldest part still colder. It’s always a good idea to rinse fish quickly under cold running water before beginning your cooking preparations. This will reduce surface bacteria and improve taste whether your fillets are freshly cleaned or defrosted. No matter what you do with fish, bacteria collects first on the surface where it’s easiest to wash away. There is no easier way to ruin great fish than to fry it in old cooking oil that needed to be changed. Don’t use oil or grease more than once for cooking fish. The whiter the meat the lower the fat content of both freshwater and saltwater species. From a nutritional standpoint, fish are categorized as high fat or low fat. High-fat fish such as salmon, and many dark-fleshed fish have over 12 grams of fat per four ounce serving. Low fat species such as bass and bluegill (white flesh fish) have about 1-1/2 grams per four-ounce serving. Crushed ice does a much better job of cooling fish than cubes or blocks. The idea is to get the ice into contact with as much fish surface as possible. Crushed or shaved ice will mold to fish or fillet forms; cubes or blocks can’t do this. Always make sure there’s plenty of ice below the fish flesh and the bottom of the cooler. If the flesh soaks in ice melt, it will spoil in a hurry. That’s why it’s important to use a cooler with a drain. If you cut your fillets into three-inch-wide chunks, you can cook or freeze meal-size portions that are all approximately the same thickness. This means that all pieces will get done at the same time in the cooking process. Use another trick if your three-inch pieces vary in thickness. I cook all the thickest pieces together in the first batch. The thinner pieces go into the pan for the second session. When cooking a single batch, simply remove the thinnest pieces first. It is not dangerous to refreeze thawed fish as long as it was fresh when it was originally frozen, was properly thawed, and is not refrigerated for more than 1-1/2 days. Cooking fish is like cooking anything else regarding tastes. You can’t please everyone so it’s best to please yourself. If you like medium to well-done fish go with thin cuts at high temperature. Thicker cuts cooked the same length of time at high temperature are best for those who prefer their fish with barely-cooked centers. If you prefer a thicker cut cooked medium or well done, go with a medium broiling or baking temperature for a longer period of time to enable the heat to penetrate the fillet.


The above information is from Best Fish Ever, a major new guide to great fish preparation and cooking. It contains hundreds of other tips on how to clean and cook fish to highest quality. This book costs $17.50 plus $3.25 shipping and handling from: John O. Cartier, P.O. Box 68, Ludington, MI 49431.