Playing with Halibut

Contrary opinion here: halibut has no place on my table. It is in the same class of insipid and boring white proteins as chicken breast. No thank you. Ann feels the same way. You are allowed to feel differently and you can go pay $30-40 per pound for it if you like, but Ann and I, we're going to pay $4-6 per pound for local Pacific rockfish.

Aside: lots and lots of similar and related species are lumped under the moniker rockfish and none of them are to be confused with the amazing Striped Bass on the East Coast which also goes by rockfish, at least in the Chesapeake Bay area from where I come.

Dry-Brined Halibut with Roasted Broccoli and Curry Butter

Ann and I do make an exception to the no-thank-you halibut rule: both the cheeks and the collars are delightful and worth every penny that we pay for them. But they cook up and taste way different than the insipidly dull and low-fat fillet meat.

So why am I even posting about halibut? Because I have a freezer full of it. And why do I have a freezer full? Because, when we were in Alaska, I wanted to go halibut fishing for the experience of it; I love fishing especially out on the ocean. And I have a rule about hunting and fishing: if I am going to take an animal, I am going to use every piece of that animal that gave its life so that I could eat. So, I am going to cook and eat every piece of halibut (the cheeks are long, long gone) in the freezer.

Another aside: halibut fishing is pretty damned boring and I don't need to ever do it again. You anchor and put a bait just off the bottom and the halibut takes your line. Then you use brute force to haul the fish, feeling like a barn door on the line, to the boat. There's no fight and not a lot of skill in taking a halibut; it's just brute force work.

As a chef, I do not have much experience in cooking halibut because I have never really cared for it, but more importantly because my restaurant was located on the mid-Atlantic Coast where we have no halibut fishery. I wasn't going to waste the jet fuel in flying these fish in from Atlantic Canada, Scandinavia, or the West Coast, not when I could make a nightly call to the nearby docks, talk about the day's landings, and have my order arrive the very next morning.

So, ever since Ann and I landed our limit of halibut in Alaska, I have been playing with it trying to make it as palatable as possible. I have learned some things that other chefs more well versed in halibut probably already know. First, dry-brining does help the fish have better flavor and retain a bit more moisture. Second, halibut is extremely temperature sensitive and I am having the best results when I pull it at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, then rest it just like a steak. Third, it's a fish that really demands a fatty sauce.

With those things in mind, I dry-brined the latest batch by giving them a good coating of a 2/3 salt, 1/3 sugar mixture and letting them sit for 45 minutes before roasting them to 120F and then letting them stand for 6 minutes, just like a steak. And then, I topped them with a simple sauce of melted butter into which I had mixed and gently cooked a spoonful of Madras-style curry powder.

Final aside: I use curry powder in my Indian food as often as Indian cooks do and that is never. I keep a little bit of it on hand for American dishes such as curried chicken salad. For Indian food, I use a mix of individual spices keyed to the particular dish that I am making. But for a simple butter to adorn a plate of roasted halibut and roasted broccoli, it worked just great.

This was the most successful halibut fillet that I have ever eaten. Still, I cannot wait for it to be gone from my freezer.