Sautéing

[1337pino]

Hey guys. So I was preparing and cooking my first fish the other week. I decided to fillet the Spanish Mackerel I caught then soaked the fillets in a salt brine solution. I then tried to sauté the fish, but I seemed to have a lot of problems here.

I tried to heat the pan until a drop of water moved around the hot pan like a ball of mercury. I then added the oil and attempted to sauté. The first lesson I learned was to definitely make sure the pan is 100% dry as the boiling water remains do not agree at all with the oil. However, even with attempts of using a dry pan, I still couldn't manage to cook without the oil spitting everywhere violently. Do you guys have any tips or suggestions on how I can better manage to do this? Otherwise, I'm just going to end up pan frying the fish instead.

[computoman]

Use a higher smoke point oil? i.e. peanut or corn oil.

[ronaldo]

The oil is popping because of the water coming out of the fish and unless there is quite a bit of oil it is probably making it stick to the pan. They say pat dry seafood but I usually put it between two towels and apply a little weight. You could also hang it for about 30 minutes or salt it and sit in on a drying rack.

[tw33k2514]

Ronaldo is exactly right. Also I would put your olive oil in your pan before it gets super hot. then after you drop the fish on the pan turn it down slightly.

[chefniall]

Looks like the last 2 comments here have done the work and answred the question for me! Cooking fish can seem hard and we actually tackled it in the last episode of the show!

N