Salmon: quick cook guide

Our one-stop quick-cook guide to salmon fillets and steaks

Salmon is enjoying a renaissance. No longer prohibitively expensive, it’s easy to find in any supermarket and equally easy to cook. Since it is a firm-textured, full-flavoured fish in its own right, it stands up to a variety of cooking methods and accompanying flavours.

The different cuts
Probably the most recognised cut of salmon at the fishmonger’s or supermarket is the fillet. It is a piece from the main body of a fish which has had the meat taken off each side of the backbone in two long pieces from head to tail. They can come packaged with or without the skin. This cut is the most versatile and can be poached, grilled, pan-fried, cooked en papillote (wrapped loosely in foil or baking paper), put into pies, or even cut into chunks and stir-fried.

The salmon steak, also called cutlet comes from a fish that has simply been gutted and cut crossways into portions through the bone, leaving the meat on both sides of the backbone attached. It has more of a round, horseshoe shape and also has bits of bone around the middle. It always has a band of skin around it as this holds it together. If you carefully remove the bones and tuck the thin ends of the ‘horseshoe’ up into the meatier part of the steak, you can secure the round shape and tie with string around the layer of skin. This gives you a salmon noisette and is usually grilled or carefully pan-fried.