There’s nothing nicer than a piece of crispy skin coating your flaky fish fillets and achieving this is a lot simpler than one thinks! The trick is to follow a few simple rules:
1. Make sure your fillets are incredibly dry.
2. Make sure you season the fillets with fine table salt 5 minutes before frying to assist in removing any excess moisture from the fillets.
3. Make sure you use clarified butter to pan fry the fillets.
4. Make sure you use a plate or some form of a weight to keep the fillets flat in the pan to prevent them from curling up.
If you follow these few simple rules, plus read the recipe provided carefully, achieving crispy fish skin will be a breeze!
TO MAKE THE CLARIFIED BUTTER:
Place your butter in a glass jug or bowl and leave in a sunny spot to melt on its own.
Once the butter has melted it will separate, the clear liquid on the top is your clarified butter.
Either scoop this clear liquid butter out with a spoon or syringe or pour through a muslin cloth. I only had a fine sieve, so I used this and it worked out ok. Put in a separate dish to use for this recipe and keep the leftovers in the fridge as it’s great to have some readily available for future use.
Crispy Skinned Fish
Ingredients
- 2 Greenfish Fish Fillets (for this recipe I used Silver Fish)
- 1 Block of Butter (500g)
- Fine Table Salt
- 1 tsp Garlic
- handful of Parsley
Instructions
- TO MAKE THE CLARIFIED BUTTER: place your butter in a glass jug or bowl and leave in a sunny spot to melt on its own.
- Once the butter has melted it will separate, the clear liquid on the top is your clarified butter. Either scoop this clear liquid butter out with a spoon or syringe or pour through a muslin cloth. I only had a fine sieve, so I used this and it worked out ok. Put in a separate dish to use for this recipe and keep the leftovers in the fridge as it's great to have some readily available for future use.
- PREPARING & FRYING YOUR FISH: Place your filleted, pin boned and scaled fillets flat on a board or plate. (You can use our recipes on how to fillet and scale fish if your fish fillets still have these attached).
- Score your fillets 1mm deep from the back to tummy of the fish (refer to pictures in this recipe which display the correct direction to score)
- Dry your fillets with paper towel on both sides until all the moisture has been removed.
- Five minutes before frying, season on both sides with fine table salt, this will allow any further moisture to be absorbed.
- Heat your pan to a medium high heat and add a generous amount of clarified butter.
- Place your fillets in the pan skin side down and use a plate to weight them down to avoid them from curling upwards.
- Cook the fillets until they are about 80% cooked through.
- Turn the fillets over and cook for the remaining 20% to finish off.
- Brush with your garlic and parsley butter before serving.
- TO MAKE THE GARLIC AND PARSLEY BUTTER: In a small pot on the stove add 1/3 cup of Clarified Butter, 1 teaspoon of Garlic and your handful of chopped Parsley.
- Melt together on a medium heat ensuring that the pot doesn't get too hot as cooking at too high a heat will kill off your delicious garlic flavours.
I gave it a go for Father’s Day this year and wow! It was amazing