Twice-cooked scallops and twice-learned lessons
April 15, 2011 
5 Comments
Another take-home lesson from the Ideas in Food classes was the importance of brining seafood. I’ve long known that it was important to brine some fish, especially salmon and arctic char, when cooking it sous vide, to prevent protein from coagulating on the surface in unsightly white puddles of goo, but I’d never really considered extending it to all forms of seafood and all cooking methods.
In the Intro to Activa class, Alex mentioned that they brine all their seafood in a 5% brine, to firm up the texture and coagulate exterior proteins, as well as help extend shelf life. Sure enough, the technique is mentioned in their book as well, which gives the example of twice-cooked scallops: scallops are brined for 10 minutes (the brining time for other seafood depends on its thickness), then cooked sous vide for half an hour at 50°C, chilled, and seared right before serving.
It’s not uncommon to see “Scallops two ways” on restaurant menus, but this recipe was the first time I’d heard of “Scallops cooked twice.” Naturally, I had to give it a try, but once again I got burned by the poor quality of grocery-store seafood. The sous vide portion seemed to go fine, but when it came time to sear them, I just couldn’t get any colour on them. The end result was… OK, but to celebrate. I’m hoping to have better luck once I can source some better quality scallops. As always, ingredient quality is a better determinant of success than technique is. In any case, I served them in a cream of asparagus soup, and
Another salting lesson from the classes: when seasoning pretty much any food, 0.5% salt (by weight) is a good starting point. A few days after doing the twice-cooked scallops, I cooked some halibut for dinner, and remembered this lesson. Unfortunately, I remembered it – and applied it – before remembering to brine the fish. Clearly some lessons still need to sink in.
How do you use brines and seasoning?
Matthew,
I suspect your inability to brown your scallops has to do with how they were preserved before you purchased them. Dry pack scallops brown beautifully. We pack scallops will barely color at all. Dry pack has no additives. Wet pack has a combination of chemicals called STP. Both methods can be used on very good scallops.
Some interesting info about scallops.
http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/blog/ingredients/scallops/
Agreed, Skip, the problem was almost definitely STP. The problem I’ve found is that the staff in most local seafood retailers have absolutely no idea how the products they’re selling have been processed, so they can’t even tell me whether their scallops are wet-pack or dry-pack. So I end up taking a chance on them, and then things like this happen!
Matthew,
If you see any whitish puddling around the scallops on display, they are most likely wet-packed. Wet-pack scallops can weigh up to about a quarter more because they retain the STP solution. So you are actually getting gypped for those wet-packed scallops.
And the reason they won’t brown is that they’re exuding that solution when you sear them.
I’ve made the twice cooked scallops as per the book several times to great success. I usually buy my scallops at LaPointe’s in Ottawa (well, usually the Kanata location).
I’ve also done the Keller one, which is brined and seared (no sous-vide) but found the twice cooked to be more reliable.
I was told by a fish monger that wet-pack isn’t allowed in Canada, and once verified that in the regs, but can no longer find the reference. Looking at the LaPointe’s ones, they have the off-white color one would expect for dry-pack.
It’s a great recipe/technique.
Thanks for that info, Paul. I saw some frozen shrimp the other day that were labelled as containing sodium tripolyphosphate, so I wonder what the current regulations are. It certainly may explain why the staff always give me funny looks when I ask about dry-pack vs. wet-pack. In any case, it sounds like I definitely need to try the twice-cooked scallops again; maybe it’s just my searing technique that needs work!