My fav salmon is done on a cast-iron skillet. It crisps the outside so you get crispy salmon goodness.
Just dry the salmon well with paper towels, add some salt & pepper.
Add a bit of vegetable oil to a cast iron skillet and heat on medium-high to high for about 3 min, until the oil is hot but not smoking. Add the salmon, cook on one side for ~4-6 minutes until the bottom is crunchy and it’s cooked about halfway through. Flip over and cook until done.
The salmon should easily be lifted from the pan when you flip it. If it’s sticking to the pan, it’s not done - leave it there a while longer.
You can serve it with a little lemon and maybe some fresh dill, or if you want to get really ethereally good, you can make a beurre blanc sauce, which sounds hard, but it’s really very easy.
Beurre Blanc:
1 shallot, diced fine
3/4 cup of acid - I tend to use a mix of white wine vinegar, white wine, and lemon juice but just about anything vinegar-y works. I’ve done it with a mix of blood orange juice and vinegar and it’s gorgeous.
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks of about 1 T. each, cold
Put the shallots in a small sauce pan and add the acid. Cook, stirring every once in a while, until the liquid is just about gone. The shallots should be like wet sand, not really any free-running liquid in the pan.
Over medium heat, start adding the butter, one chunk at a time. Whisk continuously. It will emulsify (that is, thicken and turn opaque). When one chunk is almost completely melted, add the next chunk. Keep doing that until all the chunks are gone.
The only real trick here is that you need to keep the butter moving and the temperature constant. Otherwise the sauce will break. It sounds a LOT harder than it really is.
Once all the butter is in, remove from heat, add whatever seasonings you want (salt, pepper, dill, basil… anything really). Pour over salmon. Die and go to heaven.
