The 3 Salmon Techniques Every Chef Should Learn

Mastering salmon is the ultimate power move for any aspiring chef or home cook. From crispy pan-fried fillets to tender en papillote, and finally, the luxurious 2 Michelin-star confit technique, these methods will elevate your skills and transform your cooking.
Jack breaks down the secrets behind each technique, teaching you step-by-step how to cook salmon like a pro. Whether you’re perfecting pan-fried salmon for weeknight dinners, creating an elegant en papillote for guests, or impressing with a Michelin-level confit, this guide will take your culinary game to the next level.
Learn how to achieve crispy skin, tender flesh, and complex flavors in every dish. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned cook, this video has something for everyone.

VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 – SALMON!
00:17 – Level 1
03:42 – The Problem With Salmon
04:09 – Level 2
07:56 – Level 3
12:04 – Tasting

salmon a beautiful and versatile fish just as good at home as it is in the best restaurants in the world I’m taking this incredible fish through three levels of cooking beginner intermediate and advanced a technique I learned in a two Michelin Star Kitchen firstly here’s a method to cook perfect fish at home every time so I’m just going to season the fish all over the way I like to do it personally is um sear all three sides of the flesh very lightly and then put it on the skin finish it on the skin turn the pan and let it rest on the skin so it goes really crispy so I’m just going to start it flesh side down and just leave it on a medium heat with our salmon we’re just going to do a really nice little garnish of some cherry tomatoes new potatoes and a few little green beans so just nice and simple then I’m just going to touch the sides of the salmon just about 20 30 seconds on each side there just to sear it this is very similar to the method which um which a lot of chefs use which is the the 90 to 10 method where you cook your skin 90% of the way on the skin side and then just flash the other side that’s effectively what we’re doing here but just we’re not using it exact percentage but the process is very very similar so just a little bit of color on each side really simple I got some nice pre-boiled potatoes just going to cut those in half little bit color on that other side and onto the skin and then just going to turn the heat down slightly and just leave the salmon in the pan now after about 2 minutes I’m going to turn the pan off and just leave the salmon to rest exactly the same as meat you should always rest your fish it won’t have the same sort of uh Bleeding Out juices but it will definitely release water and lose moisture when if you just cook it and serve it straight away so we’re just going to leave that to rest in the pan now turn the turn the pan off and I’m going to put my cherry tomatoes in the same pan little bit of salt little bit of pepper and just leave those to lightly Blister in the um in the residual oil in the pan so while my salmon is resting in the pan just going to take that off off going to pop another pan on the stove good quality oil a few green beans which these eyes have already been blanched but you could just boil them in boiling water and then place them straight into a pan like so medium heat just to warm through really good amount of pepper green vegetables love pepper little sprinkling of salt and then just going to warm those through really gently once they’re warm just take the pan off the heat and then we’re going to finish the potatoes so the salmon was we seared all the sides then we put it onto the skin giving it 2 to 3 minutes turn the pan off and then letting it rest in the pan skinside down Tomatoes we put in the same pan as well just to blister and just slightly warm through as you can see the salmon skin is now lovely and crispy and it’s just going to continue to sort of dehydrate and caramelize while it’s in the pan to finish our potatoes so we’ got a little bit of parsley and just a little bit of Dill as well Dill goes really well with the fish going drop our potatoes in there in a knob of butter again a little bit of salt little bit of pepper and then I’m just going to roll of all our herbs up shift add the herbs so just cut through them nice and fine doesn’t need to be crazy fine just turn that heat down nicely just to warm through I got my herbs Chopped there I’m just going to do a little bit of garlic as well finally sliced just going to drop that about one medium clove of garlic so my potatoes are nice and warm now butter is just nicely just starting to light very lightly brown and a little bit of lemon zest straight onto the potatoes like so we got our warm green beans there just going to give them a little Shake nicely so they all sort of line up face our potatoes just give it a little final bit of salt just on the skin place our salmon onto our dish wedge of lemon and then if you want you’ve got that sort of buttery garlicky Herby mix which you can just use as a dressing so here we have level one salmon worth mentioning about the salmon obviously one of the most eaten fish around the world it’s renowned at the moment for not being that sustainable cuz there’s a lot of people doing it very badly this is Westeros salmon line C Small production um probably like the most sustainable salmon you can get obviously the majority of people are doing it bad it’s why Sal is getting a bad rep um but there is still some people doing it really well and hopefully this continues to change in the industry uh so we get more beautiful suppliers like this level two cooking fish on papot so cooking fish basically in paper in a paper bag just going to make a nice little parcel so just going to fold my paper in half and then fold that half in on itself until you have a nice even paper like so and then fold them back on each other so you can get a nice little canoe shape when we’re finished now on each end I’m just going to tie it together like so tie a nice little double knot and then just going to do the same on the other side now we’re making a little almost like dish for then we just open it out we got a nice little base and we just going to unfold the sides ready for our fish to sit in like look lovely lovely jubly there we have it so we’re going to make a little trivet in the base of our bag to place our fish on so you can do this you can obviously make this much bigger and place a whole fish in there I’m going to do some really nice slices of leak just going to place those across the bottom and the salmon will sit nice on top of that three or four claves of garlic just lightly crush it with a knife just to extract the flavor you can load this up with whatever you fancy going to add a couple of slices of lemon I’m just going to lay those in and a couple of slices of ginger as well we’re going for like sort of like nice Thai infused flavors with with the lemon for the nice freshness the fish is going to sit on top of that and it’s going to steam with the white wine all the flavors that will be steamed up into the Flesh of the fish so I’m going to shave the fenel and use that as a garnish so I’ll just slice those again nice and Fine Place those into our base as well and then we’re going to place our salmon in flesh side up tiny bit of oil tiny bit of vinegar little glug of white wine unravel the paper bring the seals together and then basically just fold them over just to create a lovely seal just pinch it and roll it all the way over trying to make sure you got no nowhere for any of the steam to escape okay so now we’ve got our salmon in our bag we’re now going to place this in an oven set to 180 and this is going to take about 15 to 20 minutes salmon goes in say good night and we’ll see that in 15 minutes okay I’m taking my fish out of the oven you can kind of lightly squeeze it through the um through the paper to feel the qule I think that’s about right so for our sauce going to place a pan on the heat so this is our Thai yellow curry broth so just going to warm that through lightly so in here we’ve got some love we got coconut milk we’ve got some onions and Slot sweated off garlic lemongrass Ginger and then like a nice Curry Thai yellow curry paste so just going to have that on a low heat going do a little a very light shave fennel salad so just got a little bit of fennel lightly sliced just going to dress that nicely for our garnish so now we’re going to open up our fish so you can just lightly peel off your arom mats place the fish to one side and then we’re going to take our leaks out and just lightly place them on the bottom of our bowl a little bit of seasoning and I’m going to use the juice from the bag just to acidulate our sauce so for dress our feno we’re just going to a little bit of rape cedor little bit of pepper if this fish is cooked the the skin will easily peel off and then for extra presentation take a knife scrape out this gray bloodline just adds a little bit more finesse scrape it off like so so to finish the salmon just a little bit of oil over the top little bit of salt just over the flesh where the skin was been and a touch of lemon pour our sauce into our dish few little bits of sea percan and lastly just a little bit of Caff lime oil that is level two salmon this is level three salmon a technique that will and I learn um at dinner when we work together two mission style restaurant it is a it’s a comfy salmon what we’re going to do is we’re going to skin the salmon remove the bloodline and we’re going to cure the salmon in a salt sugar and citrus zest solution before we comy it very lightly and then sear it we’re going to remove the skin at about 3 mm above skin line so that we remove as much of the bloodline as possible hold your knife nice and flat so what you’re trying to do is like so is leave the bloodline on the base of the fish so you have this really perfect side piece of salmon so what I’ve done done there is remove that little bit of bloodline from there there’s nothing wrong with the bloodline this is all just about you know fine dining Michelin techniques just making it and getting it to be perfect we’re also going to move that slightly thin bit of salmon on the belly just to uh make sure we get a nice even cook so to make our cure we’re going to start off with a 60% salt and 40% sugar so three parts salt two parts sugar also going to grind into some large pepper little hack for you instead of grinding up peppercorns with a pesel of mortar just just open up the grind on your Peppermill pretty much the same next up lemon zest and lime zest the zest is kind of optional obviously the salt and the sugar is what you want to firm up the Flesh and to help season it whereas the zest is just purely for flavor but it will work fine without it then we’re just going to mix our cure together like so then once I’ve got got my cure just going to lay it all over the salmon underneath all over pack it nicely in make sure you got the sides cure that for 1 and 1/ half hours before we wash off the Cure so here’s my salmon it’s now been curing now I’m going to wash off all this cure in cold running water so into a pan I’m going to add my olive oil I’m going to place the oil into the oven I’ve got my oven set to 100° the lowest setting it will go I’m going to give my all 5 minutes just to just to temper up to the right temperature after that we’re going to drop our salmon into the oil so after 5 minutes just going to remove the oil just so the oil should just be coming up to that temperature that the oven set to I’m going to lower our salmon and then back into the oven for 10 minutes so after 10 minutes we’re going to pull out our salmon should now be like just warm but because the Salmon’s cure we don’t need to serve it piping hot we’ve got some pickled cucumber here which has been pickling for 12 hours so the next stage we’re going to do is we’re going to get a pan really nice and hot and we’re going to roast our salmon on one side going to go in my salmon on the skin side I’m just going to very lightly push it down 45 seconds to a minute this a light bit of pressure so we want just a really nice sear on one side I’m just going to roast this cucumber on one again on one side and we want to char this really hard the Cucumber can take a lot of charring and that slight bitterness on the roasting of the Cucumber is going to help with the flavor of the dish pickled in a basic pickle that’s just sugar water vinegar and salt Touch of uh lemon okay so our cucumber’s now ready going to turn the heat off just flip it onto the other side just to warm through slightly then we just going to season the Cucumber seaweed crumb just going to dress it all over the Cucumber this is H salmon and seaweed just adding a different levels of texture and I’ve got some lovely pickled lemons here for garnish bur blonc here which we’ve made just in the traditional French way we can show you how to make the bur blonc in one of our other videos to our bur blong we’re just going to add a little bit of pickled seaweed to Plate up we’re going to add our roasted cucumber to our dish some Sor a little bit of U bronze fennel followed by our lovely salmon and then finally our seaweed burlon pickle lemons and we got got a little bit of herb oil just to finish thinner intermediate and advanced so number one I think it’s delicious even if you over cook it slightly it’s still pretty good on papayo it’s delicious I mean it is equally lovely it almost feels more delicate almost light slightly lighter although it’s the same fish there wasn’t that much fat on this one this one feels lighter it feels a little bit healthier it feels a b more elegant you can taste a little bit of lemon and ginger and garlic just permeating through the fles and then number three The Comfy instead of having like a nice salty outside you have a really almost like a more rounded flavor on it the texture of the fish is softer um it like melts in your mouth by doing it this way for a little bit higher temperature and shorter you do get a slight texture on the outside um which means you kind of you don’t feel like you’re eating slight mush um and that little bit of roast on the on the top gives it um a little bit caramelization another texture and it’s my personal favorite way and I think lots of different skills on on on on Showcase with the coming the curing and then the roasting as well literally just 83 pieces of salon