Salmon missing its tan


 
I've always found it hard to get any color on the topside of a salmon fillet or steak without overcooking it so now I take a different approach. I dress the top of it with a pile of spinach or kale sauteed in olive oil w/garlic and some feta or blue cheese on top of that until it melts a little.
 
I gave it another try meanwhile over the weekend. Bought a salmon filet of over 3.3 pounds and coated half of it only with same salt and white pepper, the other half with a thin layer of dijon mustard and some brown sugar on top of it. I cooked it to an internal temp of about 128F and it looked like this:
6rld1s.jpg


(ignore the ribs for now, that's an other story). It tasted really great and looked err.. well, pretty much terrible, if you ask me. Granted, I did not yet have a chance to pick up a cedar plank, so it was cooked plain on its own skin over direct fire, will try to get a plank till next time, but that's still nowhere close to those Google pics for "salmon charcoal grill", unfortunately.
 
Mine usually looks something more akin to the Right Side of the fillet in your photo. That's how I usually envision fresh, grilled salmon cooked simply.

I'll sometimes get a bit more browned (lightly) on the surface for more lean and/or Red-Fleshed fish like wild-caught sockeye or King (Chinook) Salmon.

If I skin it before cooking and place it in one of those two-sided, flat grill baskets - that also gives me a bit more browning.

Then again - maybe the pics that you are attempting to duplicate may be more for SMOKED salmon than grilled, or perhaps the salmon was marinated in something like Teriyaki?

Cold-Smoked Salmon that is usually brined first (usually just simple salt and brown sugar) usually gets a bit of a "tanned" skin look to it as well.
In a large bowl about 3/4 full of water, keep adding salt and stirring to dissolve until a raw egg in the shell just barely floats
Then, add about 1 cup of Brown Sugar and dissolve that
add the salmon (steaked or fillets), cover, and refrigerate over night
Then, I usually smoke it for about 4 to 6 hours, depending on how thick it is over very low heat with some apple wood
 
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The right side didn't look too bad in person but I'm unsure what the milk-like white formations were on top of it.. Do you also have those?
 
Kristof Jozsa said:
I'm unsure what the milk-like white formations were on top of it.
Click to expand...
The white stuff is coagulated protein called albumin that collects on the surface of the salmon during cooking. Cook's Illustrated magazine did some testing and found that this happens to some extent no matter what cooking technique is used, no matter how slow or fast you cook the salmon, etc.

But this can be greatly reduced by brining the salmon for 10 minutes in 1 tablespoon of salt per cup of water. They write, "The salt partially dissolves the muscle fibers near the surface of the flesh, so that when cooked they congeal without contracting and squeezing out albumin."
 
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