S is for Salmon Filet (and how to cut it up)
I've cooked salmon for some time now. The first time I tried it, I found the taste a bit too "fishy" but over the years, I've grown to appreciate its qualities and can now enjoy it raw in sushi, smoked and grilled or baked, with or without marinades to enhance its flavour.
Past salmon dishes I've tried include salmon souffle, with a dill sauce, teriyaki salmon, baked with a caper hollandaise sauce, and a miso ginger dish as well as just baking it and serving over pasta
I'm most likely to buy it on sale, as a whole filet, after which I cut it up into 4 oz portions per serving.
This is what I brought home on Friday ... about 2 pounds of Canadian salmon filet, with the skin on, for a bit over $15.
How to portion your salmon filet:
First, rinse off the filet and pat it dry with paper towels. It looks so lovely and red, doesn't it? :)
Then, cut into the filet at the tail end, about 2-3 inches from the end. (My fridge is REALLY cold. You can see some shards of ice forming on top of the salmon.)
If you have a sharp knife, and are confident in your knife skills, you can hold on to the tail with a folded over paper towel and run a sharp knife between the flesh and skin from the tail to the head portion of the filet. However, once you make that first cut through to the skin and get about an inch under the flesh, you can remove the knife and use the back edge of your hand 'in place of the knife' to free the flesh from the skin while firmly holding on to the tail. There's no risk of cutting the skin or hacking up the underside of the flesh if you use your hand. Which is what I did.
Check out this Youtube video for the technique of removing the skin. There were no pin bones on my filet.
The skin, cleaned filet and the couple of inches of salmon from the tail cut off the skin.
I flipped the cutting board around, trimmed the belly meat off and then portioned the rest of the salmon into 7 portions. I used the width of 3 fingers as my portion guide. The weight of each portion ranged from 3-5 oz depending on the position on the filet.
The underside of the skinned salmon pieces
And, what I ended up with ... wrapped for the future.
On the right, in the Ziploc container: 6 lovely salmon portions wrapped up in pairs of similar size and weight. On the left, in the smaller container: the scraps from the tail portion that I used to hold onto when I removed the skin from the rest of the filet, the next tail portion, and the belly meat cut into about 5 strips. I also cut up the salmon skin and hope to do something interesting with it, later.
Past salmon dishes I've tried include salmon souffle, with a dill sauce, teriyaki salmon, baked with a caper hollandaise sauce, and a miso ginger dish as well as just baking it and serving over pasta
I'm most likely to buy it on sale, as a whole filet, after which I cut it up into 4 oz portions per serving.
This is what I brought home on Friday ... about 2 pounds of Canadian salmon filet, with the skin on, for a bit over $15.
How to portion your salmon filet:
First, rinse off the filet and pat it dry with paper towels. It looks so lovely and red, doesn't it? :)
Then, cut into the filet at the tail end, about 2-3 inches from the end. (My fridge is REALLY cold. You can see some shards of ice forming on top of the salmon.)
If you have a sharp knife, and are confident in your knife skills, you can hold on to the tail with a folded over paper towel and run a sharp knife between the flesh and skin from the tail to the head portion of the filet. However, once you make that first cut through to the skin and get about an inch under the flesh, you can remove the knife and use the back edge of your hand 'in place of the knife' to free the flesh from the skin while firmly holding on to the tail. There's no risk of cutting the skin or hacking up the underside of the flesh if you use your hand. Which is what I did.
Check out this Youtube video for the technique of removing the skin. There were no pin bones on my filet.
The skin, cleaned filet and the couple of inches of salmon from the tail cut off the skin.
I flipped the cutting board around, trimmed the belly meat off and then portioned the rest of the salmon into 7 portions. I used the width of 3 fingers as my portion guide. The weight of each portion ranged from 3-5 oz depending on the position on the filet.
The underside of the skinned salmon pieces
And, what I ended up with ... wrapped for the future.
On the right, in the Ziploc container: 6 lovely salmon portions wrapped up in pairs of similar size and weight. On the left, in the smaller container: the scraps from the tail portion that I used to hold onto when I removed the skin from the rest of the filet, the next tail portion, and the belly meat cut into about 5 strips. I also cut up the salmon skin and hope to do something interesting with it, later.