October 10, 2008, Newsletter Issue #390: Halibut [seafod in general] Cooking

Tip of the Week


You could get sick from only cooking Halibut for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

While seafood generally does not take very long to cook, cuts of halibut usually are at the thicker end of the spectrum.

At 350 degrees, depending on how think the Halibut is and whether or not it is bone-in, you should cook Halibut at least 15 minutes; however, 20 minutes at 350 is really the suggested cooking time for a fish of this thickness [usually 1 inch or more in thickness.] If it's more like 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick [and halibut can be] then probably 25 minutes.

Bone-in cuts take longer than fillets to cook safely; and in general in cooking any fish in a conventional or convection oven [versus a slow-cooker method] you will turn the fish over once halfway through the planned cooking time.

The halfway through does not need to be exact. It can be a little less or a little more than halfway through.

Had you asked if 10 minutes was sufficient baking for a thinner type of fish fillet, such as sole or flounder or even most trout [if not whole trout, of course, but "butterflied" [all insides except bones removed] or filleted,] the answer would have been yes that is sufficient for such a thin piece of fish.

Even haddock generally should be baked about 15 minutes; although I have at least one top-of-the-stove recipe that it can be safely cooked in a skillet in about 5-7 minutes.

You would not necessarily get sick, raw fish is still widely served in Sushi bars, but as the question suggests you are aware that the wisdom of this has come into question and that as with meat, the risk of food-borne illness is reduced by proper cooking of the meat or fish.

So the correct answer to your question, as posed, is "will you?" -- not necessarily. "Do you run an increased risk of doing so?" Yes.

One final tip: in cooking skin-on fish, I place the fish in the pan first with the skin side up; this allows the juice from the fish to partially seep into the pan; and makes sticking of the skin side less likely when the skin-down is the second side to be cooked..

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