🐟 Fish & Seafood 🐟
Fishware
Fish and shellfish is advanced #level for both home cooking and for gourmet chefs.
Nevertheless, it's mandatory for survival cooking.
A knife sharpener and a sheath for outdoor use or storage in a drawer, if a knife block is not available, is necessary to assure that especially the tip of the blade can penetrate the belly of the fish.
A fish filleting knife is dedicated as a boning knife for fish, and a chef's knife as a boning knife for poultry, both equipped with a tip of the blade knife.
A wooden or plastic cutting board are recommended for filleting fish, not the titanium ones for poultry, to keep them Salmonella-free.
Another thing is a dedicated butcher knife-set, which is completely different.
Entry Level
Chefs have great respect if you dare to cook fish on bones, which preserves the fish's flavor better, while it's not as exciting to get fishbones in your mouth. Overcooking a fish can cause it to fall apart.
Canned Tuna
Preserved in water vs oil
Chefs prefer oil because of a softer texture, depending what's served on the side, so it doesn't become too oily.
Tuna Mousse
Stir together crème fraîche, mayonnaise, finely grated onion, red pepper, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Mix in the tuna. You can choose how rustic you want your mousse.
For a list of international cuisine sauces to serve with fish see the sauces section.
Hollandaise sauce is traditionally served with salmon and asparagus.
Asparagus should be peeled by hand and chefs refer to the technique as single or doubled peeled to prevent the asparagus strands from getting stuck between your teeth.
To cook the salmon, check out this episode on Prime Video.
Another technique is broiling (overhead oven grill element)
Others would steam (salmon bellevue) it or even cook it in a pan with water.
Skin fish are particularly good for pan-frying. A narrow but not too deep cut in the middle of the skin side helps to let some steam out so it won't bend.
Skin fish can pan-fried with the skin side downwards first, and for the first minute pressed downwards with your hand to avoid that the skin shrinks and contracts, so the fish would start to bend upwards.
Skin fish can be cooked in a pizza oven for a crisp skin.
If you serve skin fish, make sure the skin side is upwards on the plate or chefs go waco.
If the skin gets overcooked, remove it before serving.
Redfish is not considered to be served as a skin fish.
White fish are usually seasoned with white pepper and not black pepper.
Meunière vs Battering
Meunier roasting translates to meunière or (pan-)fried/sautéed à la meunière in English. It describes a method where fish,
typically, flatfish, is rolled in flour, fried in butter and served with a sauce made from brown butter, lemon and parsley.
Meunier roasting (Danish, meunierstegning) means that the fish is turned in flour, like rye flour or wheat flour, and then pan-fried in butter.
The preparation, results in a light, crispy surface on the fish and is well suited to lean fish such as plaice, flounder or sole.
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Meunière means dredging, lightly dusting with dry flour over a piece of fish before pan-frying it in butter. It creates a very thin, delicate coating that helps brown the exterior and thicken the pan juices.
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Battering involves dipping food into a wet mixture made of liquid (like water, beer, or milk) combined with flour or starch before deep-frying. This creates a thick, puffy, and crunchy outer crust.
For more information on battering vs breadcrumb coating see the steak section.
Danish Cuisine
Bachelor's plaice
Ungkarls rødspætte
The bachelor's plaice is probably a recipe from "Karoline's cookbooks", which were published in the 80s.
Plaice is a flatfish and possibly a good starting point for learning how to fillet a fish in general.
A plaice is filleted either in single or double fillets to start with.
"Bachelor plaice" is traditionally steamed in butter but could also introduce a poached cod.
An alternative to butter-steamed fish is white-wine-steamed fish, which is more international cuisine.
Plaice is called Denmark's national fish. Whole-fried plaice is a cinch to cook, it must be carefully prepared, the roe must be removed, and blood must not flow out of the fish after serving. If fish generally becomes overcooked, then the meat becomes frayed.
Chefs say that most people can figure out how to steam a fish, but only a few can figure out how to fry a fish to perfection.
Others say that if you bake cod in the oven, it would be failsafe nine out of 10 times.
Regular butter is recommended over spreadable butter straight from the fridge, which contains either rapeseed or sunflower oil.
Butter sauce is simply melted butter. It's flawless, delicious, and effortless, and a great accompaniment to fish, as an alternative to the classic French, emulsified versions like beurre blanc and a cumbersome hollandaise sauce. Chefs recommend melting the butter completely and browning it around the edges to bring out the butter's nutty flavor.
Seafood
Anchovies | Ansjoser. Check out the so-called Asian salts like fish sauce here.
Blue mackerel | An Indo-Pacific mackerel also called Japanese mackerel
Brine | Saltlage. A way to keep fish salty without adding extra salt.
Catfish | Havkat
Cod | Torsk
Crayfish | Krebs. A nocturnal freshwater crustacean that resembles a small lobster and inhabits streams and rivers.
Cured fish | Lage. Preserve meat, fish, or animal skin by various methods such as salting, drying, or smoking.
Freshwater fish | Usually have a very earthy taste over saltwater fish.
Haddock | Kuller. Related to the cod. A popular fish of great commercial value but may be difficult to cook.
Hake | Kulmule
Halibut | Enten hellefisk eller helleflynder, der er markant større. Begge er en fladfisk.
Horse mackerel | Considered to be of inferior quality to mackerel.
Langoustine | Also known as Norway lobsters, are smaller than typical lobsters and are more closely related to shrimp.
Lox | Tyndt skåret laks, der er blevet saltet eller røget, ofte serveret på bagels med flødeost, løg og kapers. Det er en populær ret, især i jødiske delikatesseforretninger.
Monkfish | Havtaske. A bottom-dwelling anglerfish of European waters.
Murray cod (Murraybars) | A large Australian predatory freshwater fish.
Oysters | Østers. Check out the so-called Asian salts - oyster sauce here.
Prawns | A marine crustacean that resembles a large shrimp, many varieties of which are edible, lately seen as Torpedo prawns, which is battered prawns resembling a torpedo.
Scallop | Kammusling
Sea bass vs. Freshwater bass | Havaborre vs. Ferskvandsaborre
Shellfish | Skaldyr
Trout | Ørred. A freshwater fish of the salmon family. If it looks like salmon but it's not, then it's probably trout.