How to Make Grilled King Salmon

Host: So we have Ed Connelly and he’s the manager here at 22nd Street Lanning Grill and Bar Restaurant and it’s located right on top of Skippers 22nd Street Lanning here in beautiful San Pedro. And if you’ve never been here it’s got a beautiful view of the harbor and everything looking at all these sports boats and today you’re going to be preparing for us a special dish.

Ed Connelly: Today I’m going to grill a piece of King Salmon on our apple and citrus grill.

Host: And I know you haven’t been here that long but it seems like it was just yesterday you opened.

Ed Connelly: We’ve been here a little over two years and we’re quickly becoming the place in Southern California for fresh seafood.

Host: Now what kind of specialties do you have?

Ed Connelly: Our specialty is fresh, fresh fish, any given day you can get ten to 20 fresh fish and it’s something of sautéed, pastas, meat, seafood, anything you can imagine.

Host: And I’ve been on the boats coming back on Sunday afternoon so I’ve seen large clouds out here with outdoor dining and no fool restaurant in here. let’s get over to the grill, I want to see that salmon.

Ed Connelly: What we’re going to do here is we’re going to grill a piece of fresh King Salmon, while this is the simplest way I can think of to prepare a fresh fish. It’s also what I think is the best way to prepare a fresh fish. There are a couple of things you want to remember and it’s probably the things that people do that give them the most trouble with grilling fish. I’m going to do this on an indoor wood burning grill, you can do it outside on your barbecue or if you have a grill in the house. A thing you want to remember is always let your coals get hot and another trick that you want to use that we use at the restaurant is base your grill with oil. What I use is a little soy oil and that way your fish won't stick.

Okay, when your grill gets nice and hot you just want to put your fish right on there. All right, when you see on the side of the fish that it’s starting to cook up from the bottom, and then it’s time to make one of the moves that will make as we cook the fish. What I’m going to do here is I’m going to turn in the opposite angle of which it was initially put on. That will give it the nice cross marks. You see here on the top because we criss cross when we flipped it, it has a nice criss cross marking, not essential to the final product but it does add in the presentation. Here in the restaurant we like to think our food look as good as it tastes. To grill a piece of fish like this you can plan on it taking anywhere from six to ten minutes depending on how hot your grill is, depending on how thick your fish is.

This fish looks done now, the last thing we’re going to do and the only thing we add to our fresh fish here at 22nd Street Lanning is we brush with a little bit of paprika butter, adds a little moisture to the surface. That looks done, here’s your king salmon.

Host: Thank you Ed, I’ll try a little piece of it. oh yeah, great cook.

Ed Connelly: Well thank you.