A Few Fish Fears, Laid to Rest

October is a month of thrills, chills and full-hearted fun. We carve faces into pumpkins, share spooky stories, and enjoy the over-the-top holiday displays of our neighbors, half-hoping for a little fright. But there's one fear I come across all year long, and it happens in the kitchen: the fear of cooking fish.

It turns up everywhere, on cooking forums, in articles, and in reluctant confessions from friends who order seafood at restaurants but rarely have the courage to cook it at home. The worries tend to sound alike. What if it comes out dry? What if it falls apart? What if I ruin a beautiful fillet? 

So in the spirit of the season, I thought we'd turn the lights on and look at a few of these fears up close. Like most things that go bump in the night, they're much less frightening once you can see them clearly.

Afraid of overcooking?

Being married to a pescatarian (my husband Arron, WAC founder + CEO) has altered my culinary life in that wild-caught seafood has become an everyday feature of our family’s kitchen table. At this point, I’ve cooked seafood maybe thousands of times. Some of those times, it was overcooked, especially when I was first getting to know the nuances of each species. Wild salmon, in particular, can be a challenge if you’re used to cooking farmed salmon, since wild salmon is generally leaner than farmed varieties due to differences in how they’ve spent their lives.

But even today, overcooking can happen if I step away from the oven for too long. Or when cooking at a friend's house, where I don’t know their burners the way I know mine. Or if I forget to set a timer. Honestly, overcooking happens even in the finest chefs' kitchens.

When a fillet goes a little too far, there's no need to mourn it. Spoon a good sauce over the top to add a little moisture. Or if the fish is truly bone dry, don’t despair. Flake it up and turn it into fish cakes, which will revive it into a delicious new form. These easy baked fish cakes are built around leftover cooked fillets, and they’ll give any overcooked fish a new life.

Afraid of cooking from frozen?

While cooking fish from frozen might sound like a culinary nightmare waiting to happen, there are actually ways to do this without ending up with scary results. 

Cooking fish straight from the freezer can make it a little harder to dial in doneness, which is where a lot of the worry comes from. To get around this, try cooking with an air fryer which circulates heat in a way that cooks the fish more evenly. 

You can also poach fish from frozen in a stew or rich liquid. The low temperature will cook the fish gently so that it comes out tender. Our marinated offerings, like Teriyaki Sockeye, also stay quite juicy when they're baked, broiled, or air fried from frozen, thanks to the marinade. And something like our Pacific Cod Cakes are actually optimized to be cooked from frozen!

Afraid of fish sticking to the pan?

When I was first learning to sear fish, I made all the classic mistakes. The pan wasn't hot enough, because I was nervous about the heat. I tried to move the fish too soon, instead of letting it be. What got me over that fear was trusting the process of pan-frying fish.

If the idea of searing fish still sounds freaky to you, one thing that helps is coating the fish in a dry rub or even a light dusting of flour. That coating gives you a buffer between the fish and the skillet, and it makes searing close to foolproof. Just make sure to cook it over medium heat so the spices or flour don't burn. 

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Every cook I admire has a few kitchen ghost stories: the dry fillet, the stuck skin, the dinner that went sideways. The key is that they kept cooking anyway, and each mishap taught them something the next fillet benefited from. So this Halloween, I hope you'll leave the scares to the trick-or-treaters and give that fillet in your freezer a try. There's nothing in there to be afraid of.

Live Wild,

Monica

Pictured above: My ideal neighbor is the person who puts out a basket of Smoked Sockeye Salmon Snack Bites this weekend! Thanks to WAC’s Social Media Manager Madison S. who came up with this cute idea.