What is the best way to cook salmon so that I do not lose any nutrients? If I were to steam the Salmon, I seem to be letting a lot of fluid, oil or something ooze off. Can I collect it?
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1Best way to cook - best for what? I like my salmon both raw, steamed and grilled depending on the occasion... Maybe you want to rephrase your question to give it more focus?– LucianoMar 30 at 12:28
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4 Answers
That's indeed the salmon fat, liquifying, and then re-solidifying.
It is not useful for any culinary purpose.
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2Unless they’re referring to the albumin, of course. If it’s actually oil maybe they could work it into some sort of sauce? Otherwise, yeah, agreed. Mar 29 at 4:13
What gets out is not pure oil, but a combination of oil and any other liquids contained in the fish, such as cytoplasm. Also, during steaming, the steam condenses on the fish and can drop back down, so there is water from the pot mixed in.
It will be difficult to collect it when using a traditional steaming method, because all this stuff drops from the fish into the water, through the steamer's holes. You can collect it if the fish is in a non-perfortated vessel, e.g. if you put it in a small pan and broil it. Pressure steaming also works in a nonperforated vessel, but I wouldn't pressure-steam salmon, out of worry that it will dry out. There are many other methods of cooking salmon which allow you to catch the drippings, you can pick any of them, there is no "best" one.
Once you have the drippings, the typical use is to make a fond. I doubt that salmon, even with skin, will yield enough oil to be used as a cooking fat.
Instead of trying to collect the liquid that comes off the fish when you steam it, you may want to use a cooking method that takes advantage of this.
Two techniques that may be useful are ‘en papillote’, where you cook the fish with vegetables in a sealed pouch, and ‘mixed rice’, where you place items above a pot of a rice to steam (and then mix it together once it’s cooked).
I have cooked salmon fillets sous vide at 52*C. This allows the entire thickness to come to the same done-ness (is that a word?). There is no dry, over-done tail end and no sushi-like thick section. I then quickly broil one side before serving.
All the juices you describe are in the sous vide pouch. Let us know if you find a good use for them.
I've never done it, but I know people who have cooked whole salmon in a sous-vide bag by running it through a full wash cycle in the dishwasher (just the wash, not the dryer cycle). The novelty of the cooking method was the chief attraction. I was living within sight of Alaska so there was salmon begging to be cooked.
