Butterfly steak salmon

[Okanagan]

Grandson Code showed me a quick and simple way to prepare and cook salmon that is now my favorite. It is superb, with better flavor and slightly more tender. Like many simple things, I had to do it once to figure it out.

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First you take the fillet from one side of a salmon with skin on, shown below.

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Then, cut off a cross section of fillet, across the width of the fillet and through the skin.  Important! Cut that chunk twice as wide as the thickness of steak you want. (For a steak 3/4 inch thick, cut the chunk off of the fillet 1 1/2 inch wide).  Then, as shown in the picture below, cut that chunk in half down to the skin but not through the skin. In the picture below the fillet is to the left.  The chunk cut from the fillet is in the middle.  Note that the chunk is also cut in half, down to the unseen skin.  It is simple but you will probably need to study the pic a moment.

Now you have two long segments of salmon held together by the skin.  Fold those two segments, skin strip to skin strip, and you have the steak on the right side of the picture.  The double strip of skin is in the middle of the steak.

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Cook it in skillet or grill and it turns out like the piece below.  It is a salmon steak, cut across the grain of the meat like any good cut of meat.  There is a double layer of skin in the middle, which is easy to eat around.

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The end on grain takes flavors faster and more deeply and has a superb texture to eat.  And it looks good on the plate though my snapshot here does not do it justice. 

In the sample shown above, the steak is about 3/4 inch thick and cooked in a skillet about three minutes on a side. Salmon is easy to over cook and is best if barely done. Also, I pull out the pin bones to make it totally boneless on the plate, quick and easy with the right pliers or big tweezer.

Once you get the cuts figured out, it is quick and simple to prepare and cooks rapidly.