Carla's Foolproof Guide to Perfect Grilled Salmon

Hello, all my little fish fillets. It's Carla, and I'm back again today in my beautiful backyard. I have developed a brand new recipe, grilled salmon for beginners. This is actually a foolproof method for everyone at every level. I developed a couple of little tricks that are really gonna give you absolutely amazing results. I've got a trick for scoring the fish skin so that it doesn't buckle. The patented kill it on the first side technique, which ensures absolutely beautifully cooked salmon. We're actually gonna be in a skillet, which is gonna make sure that the skin becomes like glassy and totally crisp. I'm serving the salmon today with a charred lemon vinaigrette that you also make on the grill. It is delicious with this dish. It is also delicious with lots of other things. So really, it's a two for one. I can't wait to jump into the frothy waters and make this salmon for you. This is a two pound piece of salmon, and you wanna ask for it all in one piece, and preferably from the belly. Having one big piece is going to be an aid and actually really helping in the preparation of this recipe. Filets cook a lot faster than one large piece like this, so it's not even giving the salmon enough time to get really crispy before you're trying to move it. I'm gonna turn this right over so you can see the skin side. And rather than putting the filet into the pan just like this, I'm gonna score the skin by making some parallel shallow cuts, and that's gonna do a couple of things. It's breaking up this one large sheet of skin into smaller segments so that it can't kind of pull all the way across its whole surface. You're getting these smaller little plots of land, as it were, because the salmon is rounded, and you can even see as I'm going, it's really easy to cut here, but when I get to the outer edge and I have to angle my knife that's hitting the board, so what you can do is sort of cheat it in your favor and kind of push the filet up so more of the top is rounded, which will just help get the knife in there. The other thing that it's gonna help us do is get seasoning to actually penetrate a little bit past the skin and to the flesh of the salmon itself. And I'm aiming to space these about an inch apart. I wanna go shallow, try not to cut too deeply, but you're gonna get some of the flesh, and that's okay, that will end up getting seasoned. It's also creating an opening for heat to penetrate to help with the cooking as well. Beautiful. I've got this on parchment just to keep my board clean, cooking outside. The first seasoning I'm gonna do is the salt. I'll add the other ones in a little bit. I just wanna get the salt on here to start actually melting and penetrating into the flesh. And as you go, you can actually rub it a bit into the slits that you just made. For a two-pound piece, I wanna use about two teaspoons of salt. You don't have to measure it. Make it rain. While that salt's dissolving, I'm gonna prep the lemons. I'm just using vegetable oil on the lemon a little bit. On these cut sides, they have so much natural sugar in them, they're going to exude some of those juices and stick a little bit, but the oil will help with both the browning and the unsticking. All right, you can see that the salt is dissolved. It's like salty water down there. And I'm gonna coat it with some vegetable oil. This is sticking prevention measure number however many, because we have quite a few. I do have a recipe for not scary whole grilled fish, and that sounds so good. But in that one as well, a really generous amount of oil is incredibly helpful if you are trying to break through the fear of sticking. All right, so I have some really pretty Aleppo pepper. You could use Gochugaru, you could use Urfa, you could use just a little less of a crushed red chili flake. I love Aleppo. This beautiful red color of it will also give it a really beautiful rosy color as well. So it's another reason I love using it. And then also black pepper. Gorgeous and beautiful. I have a 10 inch cast iron skillet that I am using today. The charcoal is set up for a medium high direct heat, which means I've got charcoal all over the surface directly underneath where I'm going to be putting the food, the skillet. For the cast iron to properly heat up, I want it to sit here for about five minutes. How can you find out if it's hot enough? Well, you're gonna take a little bit of the water that you're drinking and flick it on the surface. And if it beads up right away and starts to boil, it's hot enough. Hot pan, hot chick, scored salmon. What could go wrong? We're going in and we're going in skin side down. You see how it's just sliding? It's just sliding. It's just sliding around. Sizzling, great sign. The first couple of minutes that the salmon is in there, I'm using a flexible spatula and I'm just gonna push down across the surface to make sure that it's flat. You can tell when it's not flat because when you press down, you're gonna hear hissing and sizzling where the part that wasn't touching now is touching. So on this belly end, I heard it a little bit. This is gonna roll skin side down for 90% of the time, kill it on the first side. So now that that is nice and pressed down, not sticking, I'm gonna add the lemons around the edge. You wanna see a little sizzle right away. These will only take five or six minutes. They're not gonna be in there as long as the salmon, but they do need time to cool down. So it's good to get them going from the beginning. Team salmon and lemon are doing their thing. I'm going to slice this onion. If you didn't have onion, you could definitely use scallion. You could use shallot. You could use a different color onion besides red onion. This is gonna end up being the serving platter. So the onions are gonna go right into the bottom. I'm just gonna sprinkle these with salt and toss them and they'll get floppy and a little bit juicy while they're sitting down there. And then when the salmon sits on top, it kind of is gonna make a delicious warm onion sauce in the bottom of the platter. While we're here, this is a good time to check on the salmon. I'm actually gonna turn the spatula over. So it's more like a snow plow than a lifter because when you go this way, a lot of times you'll go right into the flesh. But if you go this way, it's easier to go under. And I wanna slide really gently underneath. Okay, so as I lift up a corner, I'm gonna tilt the skillet so the oil flows that way and then flows right under that part that I lifted up. Kind of wanna do that all around. And this is really just to make sure that as the salmon's sitting, kind of gravity is working. It's pushing itself against the skillet and maybe a little steam builds up underneath. That steam, that water, that vapor can be a sticky thing. So you just want to turn that back into an oily thing. Lemons are looking delicious. I'm taking them off. That's the color that you wanna see. Really nice and charred, but not like black into a crisp. And they're very soft and very, very juicy. Don't try to juice these right away. They are too hot, so they'll cool down while my salmon is on its last minute or two. You're gonna go off of visual cues, not off of your timer always. We have a beautiful brown, crisp edge. We have opaque flesh creeping up most of the way up the side of the filet. The thinnest side, the belly side, obviously is more cooked, it's less thick. I like parts of my salmon to be really rare in the center, but you're gonna have people over who want it more like salmon skin hand roll, bruleed, and cooked all the way through. So you kind of get that with a nice big piece like this. So we know that we are brown. We know that we are crisp. Now we just have to turn this over. So I'm gonna use two spatulas, but honestly, that was like nothing happened, right? It's freely sliding all the way to the center, and I'm just gonna use the second spatula kind of as a guide and turn it onto the flesh side for about a minute. The skillet is super, super hot. The oil is hot. Everything in that pan is happening. It doesn't need to stay on the grill grates at this point. So turned over, beautifully sizzling, and I'm just gonna let it cook here for like this one last minute. We've kissed the second side, and I'm gonna transfer this whole beautiful piece of salmon right onto our onions. That's your presentation side right there. Like any large piece of meat, that salmon needs to rest. My lemon's already rested. Look how juicy, and I can squeeze them now. I think it's really helpful to have a fine mesh strainer for this because the seeds just come flying out. A lot of the pulp is gonna come out too. Everybody stirs with a reamer, right? It's not just me. Tres delicioso. Little salt. Little peps. I'm gonna kind of brighten everything up with champagne vinegar, but you can use white wine vinegar. You could use rice vinegar as well. I think cider vinegar would be good. I've been using vegetable oil for everything today because it was cooking over high heat, but for the vinaigrette itself, I have extra virgin, and there's no need to try to emulsify this. This is a broken vinaigrette, so I'm just really stirring to combine so I can get a little taste of everything. Mm, it's so fruity. Last thing for the vinaigrette, some really nice chives. I'm doing a little restaurant trick. This is a slightly damp paper towel, and that's just gonna help kind of hold everything together because they're round and they wanna roll. I feel like supermarket chives are always very sad and disappointing, but right now in the summer, the farmer's market chives are just gonna be like bodacious and gorgeous. So it's a good amount, and that's like, this is almost gonna become like a solid situation. Like there's so many solids of the herbs in this vinaigrette. It becomes really textured. Vinaigrette's done. Salmon has rested for serving. I like to break this up into more bite-sized pieces, which is gonna make it easier to serve. Another benefit of the scoring is that the pieces will flake apart kind of with those cut marks, and that makes it easier. I'm like not even really using a knife. I don't have to cut through. So I'm just flaking this, and it's just super tender. It's falling apart. That skin is so crispy and it's so like nicely adhered that all of the pieces you're gonna pick up, you're gonna get beautiful flesh, and you're gonna get crispy skin. So those onions that were underneath are now like softened, juicy, dressed with like delicious salmon fat. What's not to love? I'm just gonna season the inside of the flesh that didn't really get the salt from the beginning. As far as the vinaigrette goes, you can put it everywhere. I'm gonna concentrate on the flesh of the salmon because we've done this amazing, miraculous, special, intentional crisping of our skin. So I don't wanna completely sog it out by putting dressing right on top, but a little bit here and there is nice, and it looks really, really, really pretty. This is my crispy salmon party. So as I spoon this up, I wanna make sure I'm going all the way to the bottom of the platter because that's where my onion friends are. They're delicious and steamy, and then there's also so much good sauce down in the bottom as well. Drooling. This is a large, that's fine. That's not that big of a piece. That's not my TMJ popping. That's the skin crunching. Mm. Listen, folks, I'm not a beginner. I'm a trained professional, and I am so smitten with this method that it's hard for me to imagine putting a filet of salmon directly on the grates again. Why? Why would I? You might identify as a beginner. You might identify as an expert. This is the method that, frankly, it's about results. So this is crispy skin salmon for results. I don't care who you are.