Go to the Recipe: Patio Vibes: A Lovely Halibut Salad With Dill and Lemon
That is very strange looking freshly ground pepper in the photo for step 13.
Chili flakes from the pickled onion!
I make preserved lemons about once a month, so I always have them in the fridge. Do you think I could sub that for the cured lemon peel as long as it's rinsed really well to remove the excess salt?
This recipe is beautiful! I make preserved lemons about once a month, so I always have them in the fridge. Do you think I could sub that for the cured lemon peel as long as it's rinsed really well to remove the excess salt?
I want to see a pic plated xo
Please please PLEASE leave any reference to Kanye anything out of, well, everything.
Seriously, the mans a jackass and is in no way suitable for the fine content this site offers.
Sounds like a very summery recipe. Thanks folks!
I wonder if other white fish will work as well in this recipe? Hake, cod or pollack?
Just as soon as I get my Joule...
Though, the reference made me laugh out loud, all alone, at my computer. Just because he is such a jackass.
I live in the central time zone, at least one state away from the sea in all directions, and I have never ever seen "very fresh fish. Like fresh fresh. Never-been-frozen fresh" fish in a market, at least not any of the varieties mentioned here. Catfish, yes, but that would be awful here. Not near an ocean, not near a fish farm—not near this recipe.
Its really unfair to keep posting these delicious looking sous-vide recipes when Joule's been delayed again, and just as I was looking for a quick tasty Sunday dinner.
Edited to add; See my reply to Brian below, I made this successfully using a different method.
Whoa! This far exceeded expectations. Did the pickled onions and the lemon options. The lemon option seemed to take the most time. I just peeled the lemon out by hand, no fancy scoop. Cutting the pith out with a sharp knife gets faster after the first couple. Use a nice slicing motion. The taste was totally incredible. The most expensive Vinho Verde we could find was only $5.99. I used halibut. We are cooking this again! Fortunately there are just two of us. So we get it one more time, for no extra work. BTW. We were a lemon short (2), and did not do the slices, just the cured lemon. Just reduced the sugar proportionately. Yes, the white part is sweet. I wonder if you could skip that step and just leave it in.
There are ways to cook sous vide without a joule. Chefsteps has been doing it for several years. And Would you really prefer they just leave their site dormant while they iron out the kinks?
"Her man in the store tryna try his best. But he just can't seem to get Kanye fresh." I know everyone hates him, but it's just irresistible.
I made it the first time with halibut but used corvina ( a drum or croaker like fish ) the second time and it came out well. But don't take shortcuts. Make the lemon and onions. The dish is fantastic with them. I found the lemon peels intriguing. So I made them with Key Limes and put a few in a Pisco Sour..it really made that drink pop.
I'm not sure "never been frozen" is a good thing. It looks good on the package but it usually means the fish is less than fresh. I live at the beach in Florida and we still get crap in out stores but I've got a friend in the fishing biz in Costa Rica and he cleans vac packs and freezes Dorado ( mahi ) right out of the water. He sells it to Costco and it thaws like fresh fish. Same for Halibut. That's not a Caribbean species so I get it hard frozen and then thaw in the fridge. It's perfect. Freezing can make fish bad if done improperly or on bad fish to start but it can make fish very nice if done properly.
You have other options while you wait for Joule. This recipe calls for items to be cooked via SV. If you're going to make it all at one time ( I did that twice ) you'll need SV units or an alternative. The lemon peel calls for a SV cook for minutes. On my stove top if I dial the temp down a bit from boiling it gets me in the 200 to 205 range and holds so I did the lemons on the stove top. With more caution and temp manipulation you could do the fish the same way.
Followed it to a "T" and it turned out amazing. Keep these great ideas for summer coming!
I definitely disagree about the "never been frozen" mantra. I worked for a boutique seafood shop in Vancouver years ago - they also caught a majority of what they sold. What you really want, especially when buying fish caught on the west coast, is "frozen at sea". Unlike many other meats, fish freezes and thaws incredibly well as long as the freezing process is quick and the temp is very low. Most of these fishing boats go out on expeditions that can last weeks. Fish that is caught is typically headed and gutted, then flash frozen at -40 degrees or lower on the day it is caught. The fish that was sold fresh would be the stuff caught in the last few days of the expedition and kept cool instead of frozen. The trouble is that the fish doesn't instantly go to market, it takes time to get to the city, it spends time on the docks and in transport. The fish that was sold fresh could be up to a week old or more. Properly stored and thawed, the fish frozen at sea was much higher quality.
The shop I worked at sold sablefish and halibut to some of the best Vancouver restaurants. Once or twice a year we would have huge runs of sablefish, but the chefs would never buy the fresh stuff, they only wanted to FAS product as it was clearly much better quality. Fresh sablefish and halibut went to the yuppie customers who believed that fresh was best.
That said, there is a huge difference between "frozen at sea" and the "previously frozen" sticker that you see at the supermarket. 99% of the time, fresh fish that isn't sold is frozen before it goes bad. Then sold again on the busy weekends to get rid of it, therefore "previously frozen" is applied. This is about as low quality as it goes before it is officially bad.
Now that I live further away from the ocean (Alberta), I generally avoid "fresh" fish and do my best to seek out "frozen at sea". You will need to speak directly with the fish monger to ensure that it was frozen on the boat and stayed frozen en route to the store. It's definitely more expensive, but totally worth it for these terrific applications Chef Steps provides!
I successfully faked it with my dutch oven and a latte milk thermometer, keeping a close eye and trying to regulate the heat to around 130. The heavy cast iron helped keep the heat steady as did the water itself. It worked surprisingly well, in particular on this short cook. Could see something longer (like the carne asade posted this week) being a bit of a chore.
The dish was delicious and I've been shamelessly picking at those pickled onions for the past week or so whenever I open the fridge.
Why did I buy a Premium account? What a joke! Where are the updates?
I could not agree more! I live on the Atlantic Coast of Florida and that affords me plenty of "fresh fish" ( I'm 10 minutes from Old Mayport's 'Safe Harbor' where all the local catch, dorado, grouper, cobia, snapper were swimming 3 hours before I bought them ) but Halibut? Cod? Salmon? Those are cold water fishes that want no part of our Caribbean waters. So my friend, a fish monger, taught me how to buy frozen and how to thaw that fish. If you buy fish that was caught, cleaned and flash frozen you will like what you get. You thaw it and the bag smells like salt water. No bad fish smell. The flesh is fresh and cooks the same. I find that when I but a cold water fish that was "never frozen" I end up pitching it into the Intra-Coastal Waterway for the crabs. It's bad.
I've made about 5 batches of the as my wife likes it so much. From that I learned..don't try to fix this dish. It's not broken and you'll not improve it. The ChefStep'ers are not only cooks but food engineers..they have recipes but they blueprint their food as well.
You can make some of this in advance. The lemon peels and the onions store for a few days in the fridge. Since most of us don't have 2 sous vide units..to do the peels and the fish simultaneously..you can do the peels first and store them.
Interestingly, the recommended temp for the peels is 204 degrees F or 95.5 C. That's near boiling. You can do the peels on a stove top in a pan of water easily if you dial in the temperature by backing off from a boil. That way your SV unit can be cooking the fish.
The halibut came out mushy to the point of not being edible. I cooked it at 130 for about .5 hours. has this happened to anyone else.
There are no updates with a premium account. The premium account only allows you to access the recipes which are marked "premium." If it is not to your liking, contact ChefSteps directly, and see if they can arrange a refund, or cancel it.
I finally made the time to SV something! I love seafood so I thawed a 5-6oz piece of Alaskan halibut. I brined it, then rinse and just SV with olive oil, salt and pepper for 30 min. 131F. (I didn't have the other ingredients for this recipe but I was hungry and the Joule was just sitting there.)
I also seared in a pan for about 30 seconds served the filet with a lemon wedge and a Chardonnay. Boom!
The fish was perfect and I could flake-off the the tender pieces. I'll never overcook fish again, the whole piece was just right, not just the middle. I consider this just a small test to see if I could do it, next, the perfect egg! Then, the apartment smoked ribs!!
200g of salt for 500g of fish, even for 10-20 min, seems a bit much, is that right? Won't it be too salty?
Ah yea there is a lot of nuances that can come into play with this technique. Here is a link to a video where Grant explains it a little more, LINK. What are you really doing with this technique? Well it's a QUICK cure of the fish. The amount of salt isn't actually important, all you're doing is using WAY MORE salt than needed.
What are the two critical variables?
• First is time. Set a timer and don't be late to rinse off the cure. A 30 - 40 min cure will likely be too much. When I do this technique at home I really don't measure it, I simply season the surface with 3-4 times more salt than I normally would, pop in the fridge for 15-20 min, then rinse.
• The second is the type and shape of the fish. If you're working with a really thin cut of fish or some that has a lot of tapered sides consider reducing the time under cure by half. A square-cut salmon fillet thats about 1.5-inches can handle more time in cure because there is less surface area than lets say a trout fillet or even the bias cut halibut filets Grant is using in the photos.
Overall this is a really chill technique that cooks do to season and refresh their fish. Just be sure to monitor your time in cure. Don't feel like you need to go full send with the amount of salt. If you make fish often maybe next time just double the amount of salt you season with, let it sit then rinse. You can build up over time if you feel the need to but it really all comes down to preference in seasoning and the type of fish you have access to.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the reply!
