Whether It's Farmed or Wild, Here's How to Cook Your Salmon Right

(upbeat music)

I'm Dan Souza from Cook's Science

at America's Test Kitchen, and today

we're making a sesame crusted salmon.

Even if you use a digital instant read thermometer

and you're taking a really good temperature

and monitoring your salmon.

It's still really easy to overcook fish.

So to provide a little bit of protection

we like to brine our salmon.

Use a mild brining solution of just salt and water.

Let it sit for about 15 minutes.

During that time a lot of interesting things happen.

One is we get salt diffusing into the salmon itself.

So that helps season it, but it also does

something to the proteins.

Because of osmosis we also get water moving

into the salmon.

So it bumps up a little bit of water weight,

and that way we have a little extra

protection even if you overcook it.

For the sesame crust on the salmon

you do two really interesting things.

The first, is that we actually soak the sesame seeds

in the brine for about five minutes.

That helps season the seeds,

but it also hydrates the starches

in the sesame seeds so when we toast them

they get extra crispy.

We use some tahini which is ground sesame seeds

for the glue that holds the sesame seeds on.

We get really good sesame flavor.

The big difference between farm raised

and wild salmon all comes down to

their collagen and fat content.

So the collagen in farm raised salmon

has less chemical cross links than it does

in wild salmon and that means the flesh

is naturally softer to begin with.

Farm raised salmon also contains more fat

because they live a more sedentary lifestyle.

That means you can cook farm raised salmon

to a slightly higher temperature and it

still remains very soft and very juicy.

For wild salmon you need to go a lower temperature.

We like to cook it 120 degrees Fahrenheit to

ensure that it stays nice and moist and juicy.

And that's how we put together our sesame crusted salmon.