Learn how to cook perfect fish at home using a Gordon Ramsay-inspired chef technique for cod: a quick brine, low-temperature brown butter confit, and a crispy potato seaweed crumb for a restaurant-quality finish.
In this video, I break down the method behind perfectly cooked cod — how to season fish properly, keep it moist, avoid overcooking and create that glossy finish chefs look for. This is a refined technique, but I’ve adapted it so you can try it at home without a professional kitchen.
*Ingredients* Cod fillets
*For the Brine* 3L Water 300g fine salt 1 tbsp black peppercorns 1 tbsp pink peppercorns 1tbsp white peppercorns A few sprigs of thyme
*For the Potato Crumb* 600g Agria potatoes 500ml vegetable oil 3g chopped dill 3g chopped parsley 3g chopped tarragon A few dried nori seaweed sheets
*For the Beurre Noisette* 1kg Unsalted butter
*For the Sauce* 3 banana shallots 3 cloves garlic 150ml white wine A few sprigs of thyme 500ml fish stock 150ml double cream
*For the asparagus* 200g asparagus spears Olive oil Salt Black pepper
*For the Cod* 1. Remove the skin from the cod fillets 2. To make the brine, pour half the water into a pan along with the salt and aromats 3. Bring to a simmer, whisking the brine until the salt has completely dissolved 4. Remove from the heat and add the rest of the water to bring it down to room temperature 5. Place the cod pieces into the brine for 10 minutes 6. Remove the cod, pat dry and wrap tightly in cling film or J-cloth before transferring to the fridge for at least 30 minutes
*For the crumb* 1. Peel the potatoes before grating on the finest side of a box grater 2. Transfer to a bowl or sieve and thouroughly wash under cold water until the water runs clear 3. Place the washed potato onto a muslin cloth or tea towel and squeeze out as much of the moisture as possible 4. Run a knife through the grated potato to break up the longer stands 5. Pour the oil into a sauté pan before adding the potato. 6. Fry on a medium heat for around 10 minutes (the oil should come up to around 180C) until the potato crumb is light golden. 7. Drain the crumb on a tray lined with kitchen paper 8. Once cool, add the crumb to a mixing bowl 9. Very finely chop the herbs and stir through the crumb 10. Blitz the dried nori (if using) in a nutribullet until you have a fine powder 11. Add a teaspoon of the powder, stirring through the crumb and set aside 12. Store the rest of the nori powder in an airtight container for future seasoning!
*For the beurre noisette* 1. Melt the butter in a saucepan on a medium-low heat 2. Once melted, turn the heat up to medium and continue to cook until the butter temperature reaches 180C and the solids start to turn black 3. Remove from the heat, allow to infuse for 30 minutes before passing through a fine muslin cloth
*For the Sauce* 1. Peel and finely dice the shallot, carrot and celery 2. Add a splash of olive oil to a pan and saute on a medium-low heat until the vegetables start to soften but not take on any colour 3. Add the garlic and continue to saute for a few minutes 4. Turn up the heat to medium-high, add the white wine along with the aromats and reduce until the wine is syrupy 5. Add the fish stock and reduce by half 6. Turn the heat down to medium and whisk in the cream 7. Reduce the sauce until you have a light coating consistency 8. Remove from the heat, pass through a fine sieve and set aside
*To cook the fish* 1. Remove the cod from the fridge and allow it to cme up to room temperature 2. If confiting, ring the beurre noisette to 55-60C 3. If using the oven, turn your oven on to the lowest setting and put a pan or a small deep tray of the brown butter 4. Carefully transfer the cod to the pan of beurre noisette and confit for around 25 minutes until the internal temperature reaches 55C 5. If the butter drops below 55C, return the pan to the hob on the lowest heat and bring it back up 6. Remove from the beurre noisette, allow to drain on a rack and tray 7. Sprinkle over the potato crumb so it gives the appearance of a neat crust
*To finish the asparagus* Add a splash of oil to a sauté pan and turn the heat on to medium Add the asparagus to the pan and begin to gently sauté Cover with a lid and gently steam for a 5 minutes or until a knife goes through with on a little resistance Add a little butter to the pan to lightly coat the asparagus before removing from the heat
*To Serve* 1. Gently reheat the sauce, split with extra virgin olive oil and serve with the cod and asparagus
CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Intro 0:10 - Preparing the Brine 0:42 - Fish Prep 1:59 - Beurre Noisette 3:16 - Taking Fish out the Brine 3:53 - Preparing to Confit 4:57 - Potato Crumb 7:59 - Confiting the Fish 8:57 - Making the Sauce 11:18 - Cooking Asparagus 12:00 - Plating 13:11 - Tasting
AI Generated·May contain errors
This is the best technique from Chef Gordon Ramsay that you've probably never heard of,
and what I'm going to show you is this incredible rainbow effect that every chef is trying to
achieve. First thing I'm going to do for this cod is I'm going to get the brine on. I've got my
water here, I'm just going to take a little bit of the water, just pop it into a pan, not a lot of
it because I want to keep the water nice and cool so I can put the cod straight in. I'm just going
to pour my salt into the water just to dissolve, some bay leaf, peppercorn, black, white and also
some pink as well as some thyme. It really is a very classic sort of recipe that's steeped in all
the sort of technique that Gordon Ramsay became famous for. The first thing we do is we're going
to get the brine on. This is a 10% brine. So what we're going to do is we're going to brine this
fish very quickly and what that's going to do is season the outside of the fish and help to lock
in that moisture in the cod filler. So we're going to take the skin off our cod for this dish. So
what I'm going to do is just start on one side of the cod, go underneath the skin. If you can't
feed the fish with the skin off, the skin can go quite flabby, not a very pleasant eating experience.
So we're going to remove it. So as you can see I've left behind what we like to call the blood
line on the base of the skin. So by just going in and just holding the knife above the skin
and then I'm just going to trim around the sort of the rib bones of the fish there. So once my
salt is dissolved then I'm just going to submerge that liquid into the rest of the brine and give
that a really good mix. When you're doing any sort of fish prep you want to make sure you're doing
really nice long smooth movements. So it's going to remove that little bit of the brown flesh there
like so. I'm just going to square off the end there so it's nice and neat. All this sort of
trim can be used for things like fish stock or even like things like fish cakes. You can save
it all up, chuck it in the freeze and once you've got a large amount you can make a nice batch of
something. I'm just going to portion my fish into three nice portions. So what you can do with this
brine is you can actually make it the day before. The flavour will increase in the brine and all
those sort of aromats of the pepper and the thyme will infuse into that water. I'm just going to
place that cod into the brine and that's going to go in there for 10 minutes. It'll be really nice
and gentle with the fish at this stage. The second super key element to this dish is beurre noisette.
So what beurre noisette is, is effectively brown butter. Browning it off and that what that's going
to do is the butter is going to caramelise and the milk solids are going to sort of separate from the
butter. You can do a very gentle sort of brown butter which is like the sort of thing you know
if you're at home and you, you put your your butter in the pan for your scrambled eggs or
whatever and you just leave it a little bit too long and it goes a little bit foamy. I'd say that
is a very mild brown butter and you can go all the way up to sort of 190 degrees centigrade
which is quite intense, quite dark but still absolutely delicious. So we're going to go around,
we're going to go pretty far, we're going to go about 180 for this recipe. The butter goes in
and you really have to let it, let it froth up and you're like oh what's going to go on here and then
it cools back down, then it caramelises. You've just got to be, trust your probe with it. So we're
at 120 right now. Can't wait for the comments, how much butter? Yes it's a lot of butter but you
wouldn't have it any other way. 135ish, it's gone from being like cloudy butter to now starting to
separate. So as you can see that's what I was on about, it foams up and then it cools down and
there you have it 180. So what we're going to do now is just literally take the pan off the heat
and then just leave it to the side to cool down slightly. Passing it when it's 180 degrees is
obviously a little bit dangerous. So next we're going to take out our fish. You can see the fish
visibly firmed up already and I'm just going to set that aside there. So in the restaurant what
we would do here is sometimes we would wrap it in cling film and that would just sort of help to set
the structure and give you a really refined finish. What we're going to do here is we're just going to
lightly wrap it in a bit of tissue paper which is going to help to dry it off, firm it up slightly
and it's going to allow the protein and the fat structure just to set in the fridge and we're
going to leave it for about 30 minutes up to about an hour and a half, two hours max I would say
because obviously it's got the salt on, it's going to continue to cure. And then we can take our
butter, it's just cooled ever so slightly, pass it through our chinois. If you haven't got a cheese
cloth, muslin works absolutely fine, like a blue jay cloth from your supermarket or anything like
that and what you're left with is these caramelised milk solids in the bottom there. When you look at
it on a spoon it's just actually not that dark at all, it just looks like sort of sesame oil or
something like that. So I'm not going to try it now because it's radioactive. So we're looking to
take this to 55 degrees. So that's the temperature that Gordon confies his fish at. This method for
cod we actually found in the Gordon Ramsay recipe book. I mean the photo looks absolutely stunning.
Where's the ******* sauce though Gordon? Where's the cod sauce? So we've got our cod, we've confied
it, we've brined it. The next thing we're going to do is, what he serves it with is this amazing
potato and kombu crumb which we've analysed the recipe and we've sort of made a simpler at home
version. So this method is a really classic, very refined way to get perfectly cooked cod or fish,
any fish really, you can apply the same technique and then adding a crispy texture which is going
to deliver on flavour and maximise both the the cuisson on the fish and the textural element on
the top. For the potato crumb we're going to peel the potatoes and then we're going to grate them.
So we tried a couple of different methods of how to get this crumb at a high enough quality
that we think it replicates it and this is the best way that we found. Two potatoes, the finer
side of our box grater. You can already see before I even tell you how much sort of moisture and wet
starch is on this potato. So this technique, this method that we're going to show you is a way to
get rid of that. So what we're going to do is we're going to take this potato, we're going to pop it
into a small bowl and we're going to rinse it in cold running water until the water runs clear.
Squeeze it dry with a cloth and then what you've effectively got is you've got potato which has had
all the starch washed out of it and it means you're going to be able to get it crispier
and the natural sugar in the potato isn't going to send it too dark before you've got it crispy.
So I'm going to rinse that in cold running water. While the potatoes are rinsing I'm just going to
get the oil on, just a little bit of oil and this is what we're going to cook the potato crumb in.
If you're ever doing sort of shallow frying or deep frying in a pan, never go more than half,
half full. Just going to put it on a low medium heat just to come up nicely. We're looking for
about 160 to 180 degrees there for the crumb. So my potato is now rinsed, you can see the colour
difference already and now what we're going to do is we've got a little bit of cheesecloth here.
We're just going to place the potato on top of the cheesecloth and then almost like wrap it up like a
little ball and squeeze out the water. So the more you can squeeze out at this time the better the
crumb you're going to get. So I like to sometimes just about open it back up and just break up the
potato, lay it down in a different sort of format and then go again. Then you can take it out of the
cheesecloth onto my board. I'm just going to run my knife through this a little few times,
place that into a bowl and then once the oil comes up to temperature we're ready to fry this off.
Oil is about ready, we're at 182 right now so I might just let that cool down slightly
and plop that into our oil. Give it a good mix around. I'm just going to keep cooking that until
it goes nice and golden. Keep it around 170 to 180. The temperature will drop quite considerably
once you put the potato in. Just keep your heat on medium low. Okay so once you can start to see
the middle go golden brown you're then going to pass it off. Don't scare the camera man.
And then into a chinois, give it a really good shake and then straight out onto your cloth.
Just spread it out because obviously this has got 180 degree oil on it. If you leave it in a pile
the stuff at the bottom of the pile will start, will carry on cooking. So as you can see
then I've got a bowl of hot oil which I'm going to just put aside and make sure that nobody touches that
and then you can just leave your crumb to cool down. So what I did there I just had a little
bit of kitchen roll underneath with the jacobs on top and I just spreaded it out straight away
and as you can see there you've got a beautiful golden colour, a nice fine crumb. If you didn't
want to use potato and go through that fast you can actually do a similar method which is what
we used to do a lot with Heston, which is where you do that same process of the oil but you use
panko breadcrumbs. Drop it into the oil, give it a really good mix and then pass it off and spread
it out in a very very similar way. So now our crumb's ready we're going to go back to our fish.
I put my butter in the fridge briefly just to cool down slightly because it wasn't coming down
quick enough. So I've got my butter there at the moment it's 60, about 60 degrees. So then I've got
my cod here which has now been in the fridge for about 25 minutes. We just basically cured the very
outside and the inside is still because it was such a quick brine but high intensity. We seasoned the
outside but the middle is still going to be perfect and flaky. So I'm going to place that down into my
butter really gently. So now obviously the cod's gone in stone cold so that's going to
cool down the butter slightly. I've got an oven set to 55 degrees so if you're doing this at home
if you can't get it low enough in your oven you can, even if it's slightly higher 60, 65, you're
still going to get a beautiful result. The other alternative is to put it in a pan and then do it
on a very, very small hob. It's a lot harder to manage because you have to keep going on and off
and on and off. So I'm just going to place the whole thing into the oven and I'm going to check it
after the first five minutes to make sure the temperature is actually on 55. I've got some
shallots, some garlic, double cream, white wine and a little bit of thyme. Nice sort of saucier pan,
low heat, just a couple of knobs of butter. Finely slice your shallot, good pinch of salt. So the
shallot is obviously going to add a really nice sweetness to our sauce. We're going to serve some
lovely asparagus which has just come into season now in the UK. Just prep it down by removing these
little nubbins off the outside. Oh this is ready. You can see the butter's cooled down slightly.
So the butter dropped slightly to 50 but the oven's set to 55 so it should be fine. Put on
the timer for another 10 minutes then we'll check it again. With the asparagus instead of snapping it
what we're going to do is we're actually just going to cut it to get a nicer finish
ever so slightly on the angle. As soon as you start to see the pink
turn into light green before it goes into dark green. So once you've got a little bit of colour
in your shallots we're going to go in with some garlic and also some thyme. Get it sweating off,
get those flavours sort of mingling together. Okay so next we're going to go in with our white wine.
Reduce that by half. I was picking some herbs for my crumb to finish it off. So I've got some dill,
some tarragon and some parsley. I'm just going to take the stalks that I picked and just put those
into our sauce as well and then we're going to finely chop these three herbs. We want to get
these herbs really fine for the crumb and pop that into a container ready to finish the dish later.
Next we're going to go in with some fish stock, about half a litre and then we're going to
continue to reduce that. So in Gordon's crumb what he uses is salted kombu which is quite hard to come
by. So what we've found the easiest thing to get in supermarkets is nori sheets. So we're just going
to put it into our blender and hope that this blends. Let's give it a go. We've got our seaweed
blended up there. Pop that into another little container and that's going to be ready to season
our crumb later. So we're at 15 minutes so far. I'm going to put it in for another final 10
and we should be good. Once my fish stock has reduced then I'm going to go in with the double
cream. Bring my sauce together, reduce that for a few minutes before we're going to pass it into
a smaller pan. Ready for service. So to finish the sauce we're going to go with a touch of lemon
juice. Bring that together and we're going to set that aside while we cook our asparagus. So asparagus
is always better cooked in oil rather than water. Using a little bit of rapeseed oil here.
About a tablespoon give or take. Don't want it to be oily, we just want it to conduct the heat
slightly and then we're going to place a lid on our asparagus and just gently move this around on
a low heat. As you can see the water coming out of the asparagus is going to be enough to lightly
steam the asparagus on a very low heat. The fact we're not putting any water in there is going to
lock in the chlorophyll and keep it really beautiful and green. Gently move the asparagus
around in the pan just because if we let it still it's going to caramelise on one side. So we're
looking to roll it around in that heat and every now and then just give it a little check on it,
see how it's doing. Right so we're getting ready to plate up now. So asparagus is just about done.
Our cod has just come out of the oven. So our next stage is to crumb our cod. I'm going to take some of
that potato into a container to mix it. We're basically going to season it with the nori
and a touch of the herbs as well and the green herbs are just going to help to bind it because
they're going to have a little bit of water content in them as well, as well as adding that beautiful
fresh perfumed aroma. Asparagus is coming out, give that a little taste. So I'm just going to put a tiny
touch of oil on our asparagus, a little hit of a pepper, a touch of malt and salt and then we're
going to remove our cod. You want to be as gentle as you can here. We're placing ours onto a wire rack.
You want to make sure once you've removed it from the butter that you're almost pretty much ready
to go straight away. I'm going to put a touch of pepper over the top. The key factor that we've
managed to achieve here on this cod is called iridescence. It's basically where we've cured the
fish and then confit at a low temperature. We've made all of the proteins lie in the same direction
giving us that beautiful rainbow finish across the cod which is very, very hard to achieve.
Okay, it's time to plate up. So we're going to place the fish on top of the asparagus,
then we're going to go with our sauce. Good quality olive oil. Hey babe!
Oh, so good. I would usually take cod to like 42, 44. So I was thinking it would be over but
because it's in the butter it just sets that protein structure. It's so melt-in-the-mouth
and delicious. Oh, sweet connection. I love asparagus. It just makes my pace faster. Does it?
It doesn't happen to everyone. Very intense.
