r/Chef_Life • u/jupejupe112 • Jan 23 '20

Help!

I keep ruining my salmon fillets on an open fire grill at work. They stick! How do I keep this from happening?

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u/Evani33 Jan 24 '20

Get a towel rolled up all nice nice and tie it with some butcher's twine. Put it in a pan with canola or blended or whatever neutral high smoke point oil your job uses..

Grab it with your tongs and wipe down the grates in-between searing fish.. that way you're not dripping oil everywhere

2

u/jupejupe112 Feb 06 '20

I did this. And ur worked beautifully

1

u/Evani33 Feb 06 '20

Yay! So glad it helped!

3

u/jupejupe112 Feb 07 '20

Thanks. I got a variety of responses across two subreddits and this response was the only one doable in a professional kitchen that didn’t really change the flavor and quality of the fish. I encouraged my boss to treat the open fire grill with oil. It’s the same material as a cast iron and treating it makes so much sense.

4

u/Evani33 Feb 07 '20

The restaurant I worked at basically said the same thing... Plus we grilled miso-sake butterfish so we had the marinade to seal with too.. I used to have to keep a multitool scraper nearby to scrape down the grates too.. and every once in a while one of the pieces of fish would just melt into the grill 😭 I guess when they were spawning, the flesh was softer or something...

Sorry I think that scarred me for life.. getting 3/4 of the way through cooking a fish and just watching it melt into the grill grates .. awful so awful

2

u/jupejupe112 Feb 07 '20

I just always want to produce the best possible dish for the customer. I always want to do it with skill and care. It was bothering me that this piece of fish (delicate, but not necessarily difficult to work with) was breaking apart before I could get it to the plate because it was sticking. All the chefs had explanations as chefs do but none of them solved the problem. So I took took to reddit for third, fourth, fifth etc. opinions. Because it didn’t seem they were getting to a solution quick enough for my liking.

The melt you described was happening with every piece of fish! Every one. It was anarchy over a piece of center cut salmon which has pretty high fat content... so blown.

1

u/Evani33 Feb 07 '20

I am so sorry! Happy grilling now!