Many people make these mistakes when they are cleaning, preparing, cooking, and serving a fish dish.
Everyone knows it’s not good to play with your food. When it comes to cooking fish, shrimp, crabs, and other kinds of seafood, playing around is an even worse idea. Many people make these mistakes when they are cleaning, preparing, cooking, and serving a fish dish. Don’t be one of them the next time you have a get together this spring or summer.
Moving Fish Around
Unlike other types of seafood and proteins, fish is highly delicate. The more it gets moved around while it’s cooking in the pan, it will release more juice. Fish is at its best when it is crispy and juicy while still soft and easy to chew. If you want to pan-fry fish, keep it as steady as possible and don’t turn the heat up too much. It will only take three or four minutes to cook the fish, and then it’s time to flip it over. Baking the fish means a ten-minute cooking period, followed by some resting. Just use olive oil to baste the fish and add some more complex flavors to it.
Valuing Quantity
Valuing quantity of fish over the quality of fish is another mistake that’s easy to make. This becomes even more problematic when you are running a restaurant and not just planning a dinner party at home over the weekend. Firmer fish are the fresher ones because if a fish has been frozen too long, it will affect the overall quality of the fish – both in terms of how well it cooks, and how good it will taste. Having ten pounds of smaller frozen fish may be a good idea if you need to produce large amounts of sushi or anchovies to put on pizza, but sometimes having five pounds of higher quality fish, such as salmon, rockfish, or sea bass can make a difference instead – especially for a seafood eatery.
Freezing Mistakes
All fish filets should be adequately cleaned and dried before going into the freezer. This helps to prevent freezer burn, especially if the fish will be frozen for longer than two weeks.
Adding Seasoning at the Wrong Time
Finally, be mindful of how you are seasoning your fish. Salting or seasoning the fish while it is still cooking in the pan seems like the way to do it, but you can dehydrate the fish that way. It pulls the fats and juices out, which is the opposite of what you want to do.
YOUR SEAFOOD DESTINATION
Costas Inn has been a Baltimore tradition since 1971. You may recognize our restaurant, which was recently featured on the Food Network with Michael Symon on Burgers, Brew, and ‘Que! We were also voted the 2015 #1 Baltimore Seafood Restaurant by USA Today, as well as #1 Crab Restaurant 2014 in the Baltimore Business Journal. You may have also spotted Costas Inn during one of our 9 appearances on the Today Show or heard one of our many interviews on WJZ TV Channel 13 with Ron Matz and Marty Bass.
You can enjoy our famous crab cakes in-house or order them online for any time eating. We also provide some of the best seafood catering in the Baltimore area! You can also get your fill from Costas even when you’re not in our dining room: follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube!