If your dog ate prime cuts while you got leftovers, would you be mad?

Home cooks let it happen all the time.

Because one of most underrated ingredients in the meal prep kitchen is often treated like food waste.

And even though it's:

• Conveniently attached to salmon

• Packed with essential Omega-3s

• Delightfully crispy when well-prepared

Home cooks are so squeamish about cooking salmon skin...

They often buy skinless fillets instead.

Which means seafood processors get rid of it...

And it's turned into:

• Skin creams (rich in collagen)

• Nutritional supplements (pills)

• Pet food (salmon skin dog treats)

News flash.

If Bella the poodle is the most well-rounded epicurean in your household...

You got a problem.

But once you learn the technique that high-end chefs use to transform the natural skin of wild salmon into a golden-brown crust...

Over a perfectly cooked fillet...

You're top dog again.

In this post, I'm breaking down the steps to create a succulent, crispy salmon skin for this 51g protein dish:

Crispy-skin salmon with pickled sweet chiles, bamboo rice, and coconut-red curry

…using only a pan and spatula.

Is salmon skin good for you?

Before you start ripping off and devouring the skins of random salmon, be aware of this:

Not all salmon are created equal.

Although both types are nutrient dense, farmed salmon generally tends to be fattier, while wild salmon has slightly more protein.

So if you're using skin-on salmon for your meal prep, I recommend buying wild salmon because it has a healthier ratio of protein to fat.

In both types of salmon, the skin contains plenty of healthy nutrients.

It's abundant in Omega 3 fatty acids, which help lower blood pressure, as well as vitamin D and vitamin B12.

Salmon skin is also a good natural source of collagen, which strengthens our skin, muscle, and connective tissue.

Skin-on, or skin-off?

Skinless salmon is the most popular version sold in stores, and it's easy to see why:

The cooking process is much simpler when you're only cooking the flesh without the skin.

For a super-easy weeknight dinner, it's hard to screw up a fillet of skinless salmon.

(Unless you overcook it.)

But skin-on salmon requires a bit more skill to execute well.

The tricky element is the moisture.

Salmon skin contains a lot of moisture, and it can't get brown and crispy until that moisture evaporates through cooking.

How to get crispy salmon skin every time:

Although this cooking method only takes 3-4 minutes, remember this:

The trick is to resist the urge to flip the fillet before it's properly crisp and browned.

If you flip it too soon, the skin will remain soft and wet.

So give the process time to work, and you'll end up with beautifully browned, crispy skin.

For this dish, I use the pan-searing method.

Step 1:

Preheat a heavy sauté pan on high heat, and add 1 Tbsp oil.

Step 2:

Pat the skin of the fillets on a towel until they are completely dry. (If they're still moist, they'll stick to the pan, and they won't brown.)

Step 3:

When the oil is smoking hot, season both sides of the fillets with salt. Quickly (but carefully) place them in the pan skin-side down.

(If you don't do it quickly, the salt will draw out moisture onto the surface of the fish, causing it to stick to the pan.)

Step 4:

Turn the heat down to medium-low, and sear the fish for about 3 minutes. While it cooks, press a fish spatula very gently down onto each fillet for 15 seconds to ensure the skin cooks evenly.

Step 5:

After about 3 minutes, carefully flip the fillets onto the flesh side, and cook them for another 30 seconds. If the skin hasn't browned evenly, turn them back onto the skin side and lightly press them again for another minute.

Step 6:

Remove them from the pan and set aside to cool on a plate.

Can you get crispy salmon skin by cooking it on the grill?

Sure.

But it won't cook quite as evenly, and it's more likely to burn.

The pan-searing method uses just enough oil to brown the skin evenly without adding much fat...

Which makes it a great way to prepare salmon for your high-protein meal prep.

This week I paired a pan-seared fillet of wild sockeye salmon with steamed bamboo rice...

A delicious, quick-cooking starch with a beautiful green color from the addition of bamboo juice.

Pickled sliced sweet peppers add another splash of color...

And a spicy coconut red curry sauce gives the dish a satisfying richness balanced with a squeeze of lime.

Coming in at just under 90 minutes prep time, this recipe (especially the sauce) is one of my new favorites.

So if you’ve been playing it safe with salmon recipes, put some skin in the game and try this one next week.

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