You get a gorgeous salmon filet. It goes into the skillet, becomes chalky flakes on a plate, and then it dry out. You know what’s happening: you smell it brown; you hear it sizzle. You’re winning! Oh no, now you’ve turned it over, the meat fall apart, and you see you held it there for just a few seconds to many. This is where sous vide comes into play.
It solves the time issue with cooking, but it adds another variable that can trips up even seasoned cooks. Time doesn’t act independent from temperature; these two variables combine to cook your salmon. It’s important not to get lost in the clock; instead, read chart: Temperature, not time, controls the final texture. The timer is a proxy for what the temperature do to your meat’s intermuscular fat.
How to Cook Perfect Salmon
If you cook at a low temperature (say, 110 degrees Fahrenheit), that fat will be largely solid, resulting in a translucent, sashimi-like texture. Increase the temperature, however, and that fat will melt. At 132 degrees, most of it have rendered out, creating a firmer, more opaque flake with a weeping white protein. This is what well-done looks like.
Where do you draw the line? Decide what point along this range suit your taste. Most home cooks shoot for something between 115 and 125 degrees, which retains some moisture while also setting flesh enough so it doesn’t fall apart when pierced by a fork.
The dial setting is important, but so is species. Wild sockeye has less fat than farmed Atlantic salmon, which affects its behavior in the water bath. Higher fat content means that farmed fish maintain more moisture under the same conditions,” the infographic says. Because leaner wild salmon isn’t quite the same, you’ll want to make a slight adjustment. Dial down a couple degrees below what you’d do with farmed, and you won’t dry it out. A little tweak, but it’s the difference between dinner and disaster.
The second half of the equation is thickness, which is where people mess up. Don’t think that because salmon weighs X ounces that you should of cook it for X amount of minutes. Don’t cook salmon based off its weight; cook it based on the thickness of the thickest part of the fillet. Because heat needs to conduct from the water to the center of the meat, it’s going to take some time. If you have a thin piece of salmon, it will cook through in about twenty minutes, whereas if you have a thicker center cut, it could take close to an hour. As the graph demonstrates, twice as thick equals approximately twice as long, although this raises the tough barrier: after an hour, the texture starts to get worse and the fish gets all mushy.
Unlike with chicken or beef, there’s no advantage to cooking the salmon any longer then it needs to reach the desired state. When it’s cooked, salmon likes to get out of the bath soon.
The thickness rule governs the time spent in the bath, though the time the fish spends curing (with salt & sugar) depends on its weight. This works because the process has two separate part to consider before using a water bath. A jumbo fillet might take several days to cure, but will be ready for cooking in the same amount of time as a thin fillet of equal thickness, if its center reach the right temperature.
Now here’s where everyone f*cks up on all their hard work. You’ve got your perfect cook going on in the bath, and now you want some color and some crust from the sear. More than 20 seconds each side on a hot pan, however, and you’re beginning to cook the outside of the salmon beyond what’s been done inside. Make sure the surface is pat-dry, put the pan on screaming hot, and go-go-go with the fish. Take it right back out again.
I’ve found that chilling the salmon in ice water quick after cooking prevents any further breakdown of the inside as well. It seems backward to cool something off right after it’s cooked, but it keeps the carryover heat from carrying the middle into the next range of heat. Get that timing down and you’ll never be able to serve another piece of dry salmon.