Food, Home & Lifestyle

Baking: Salt-Baked Branzino With Fennel and Red Pepper Vinaigrette

Lesson time 20:35 min

Sautéing and pan roasting are not the only ways to cook seafood. In this lesson, Chef Keller shows you how to create a salt crust for a branzino to capture and intensify the flavors.

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Topics include: Baking: Salt-Baked Branzino With Fennel and Red Pepper Vinaigrette

Thomas Keller

Teaches Cooking Techniques III: Seafood, Sous Vide, and Desserts

Chef Thomas Keller’s third MasterClass is devoted to preparing seafood, sous vide cooking, and making classic desserts.

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] CHEF: Another way to use our oven is to bake fish. I don't mean just put a piece of fish or a filet of fish in the oven. We've all done that before, and that's fine. But I'm going to cook a fish in salt crust-- salt-baked branzino, carmelized fennel bulb, and red pepper vinaigrette. One of the reasons I love this is because you're encasing this beautiful piece of fish in the salt. It's actually steaming with its own juices while it's encased in the salt. We have our salt here. I've just finished mixing it. This is just kosher salt with egg whites in it. One way to tell you have enough egg whites in your salt, as you're mixing, take a fistful. Compress it. Open your fist. Let that fistful fall out. If none stick to your hand, then it's a good indication you have enough egg whites in your salt. It may appear to be like wet sand at a beach, for all of you who've made sand castles at a beach. You just set that aside. We're going to begin by removing the fins, the gills, and a little bit of the tail. And we have our gratin dish, so our bass has to fit in there. Any fins. Be careful, because they are sharp. You can stick yourself. We don't want to have an accident. So we've removed all of our fins. Now we're going to remove the gills from the gill cage. So just stick your finger inside and pull it up like that. I'm going to revert back to my other hand. And then just snip off the head. Follow it down. Then very simple. Same on the other side. Put my fingers underneath down to the edge. Cut. Release it. Follow on up. Boom. I'm going to take it over to the sink and just rinse it out with some cold water. So we cleaned her up inside. There's no blood, no excess blood. The gill-- the gill cage is clean. We have no fins left. So just dry out that moisture, get a little residue blood probably from that. Yeah, you see? That's good. Going to just make sure that our fish is going to fit there. We'll trim it. There's a story about a great friend of mine who, when he was married, he bought a pot roast, beautiful pot roast to bring home to his new wife, Jane, to cook. Jane immediately hacked off two ends of the pot roast before she began the process of cooking it. Charlie was aghast. He said, my god, why did you cut off the ends of the pot roast? Said, well, my mother did. Charlie said, well, get your mother on the phone and find out why she cut off the ends of the pot roast. Just seems like such a waste to me. Jane gets her mother on the phone. Mom, Charlie's upset. I cut off the ends of my pot roast because you always did it. Why did you do it? I don't know. That's the way Grandma always did it. Well, damn, get Grandma on the phone and let's find out, because Charlie's really upset. Gets grandma on the phone, grandma says, I cut the ends off the pot roast because my pot wasn't big enough. So just goes to show you that sometimes these old wives' tales are practical at some point but not at another. The point her...

About the Instructor

In his third MasterClass, Chef Thomas Keller focuses on preparing fresh seafood like lobster and salmon, making classic desserts such as apple pie and lemon tart, and showing how sous vide cooking can be done at home to enhance flavor and texture. Whether you’re a beginning or advanced cook, you’ll learn the techniques and principles that will give you the understanding and skills to get the most delicious results.

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Thomas Keller

Chef Thomas Keller’s third MasterClass is devoted to preparing seafood, sous vide cooking, and making classic desserts.

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