How to Grill Seafood

Transcript:

One thing when cooking fish, especially fillets, you don't want it to stick to the grate; so hot grate, oiled grate, and you're ready to go. Let's start with salmon. Now, I'll tell you, salmon is one of the most versatile fish on the market today. Um, you can put...you can start it off with a little olive oil, a little salt and pepper, or you can actually do a dry rub. You can do a sweet finishing sauce or you can do a buttery finishing sauce...very, very versatile. Today, let's just apply a little bit of olive oil and a dry rub and seasoning, and we'll put that over a hot grate. Notice how the fish starts to flake right there? That salmon is about ready. To finish it out though, I'm actually going to put a little seasoned butter on those babies. Look at that right there.

Let's talk about shrimp. Now, shrimp skewer 101: this is the absolute wrong way to do it; reason being, one skewer all the way through, you start flipping them on the grill, and they will turn and almost look like a weathervane. Now, how can you grill evenly with shrimp turning like that? You can't do it. You got to rethink your decision. A couple of correct ways...ways to do it, one, is notice: one skewer, but I go through the shrimp, double, all the way up. Also, these are soaked skewers; you always start out with soaked skewers, because when you're cooking over hot temperatures, the skewer will actually burn, and you don't want that. You don't want to burn your skewer in two while your shrimp are on the grill.

So, I've put these shrimp in a chipotle-lime marinade, pulled them out so they're nice and oiled down, and I want to cook them on about three hundred degrees, so we want to come off the main portion of the fire and cook them about right there. The worst thing you can do to shrimp is cook it too fast. You absolutely don't want to do that. It gets almost rubbery, to a rubbery consistency. Also if you'll notice, I put this skewer away from the fire, not directly over the charcoal; and you do that so the skewer does not burn.

Your other method of skewers, and a real simple easy way to do it, is do a double skewer; and talk about easy flipping. Okay, on the grill, when they're ready to flip over, you can ease it over without the shrimp turning.

Okay, and for tuna...there are two ways to cook tuna: one is grilling it all the way through. To do that, we'll brush it with a little olive oil, a little salt and pepper. To grill tuna all the way through, you want to cook it over four hundred and fifty degrees, again about four minutes on each side. The thing about tuna is, it's relatively lean fish, and it will dry out quickly if you get it over about a medium-rare. Now, in order to counter that, you want to put it in a marinade or put a oil on before you put it on the grill. Uh, also, when you serve it, you can actually serve it with a sauce on top or a salsa...ah, salsa, and that will actually counter the dryness. That's a good tip as well.

The other method: this is a seared tuna, and what we're going to do is we want to sear the top, sear the bottom, and um, and it will be nice and raw inside but very, very good. Now to do this, you want to go to the hottest part of the grill, drop it right over the fire, and you want to go about a minute and a half on each side at five hundred degrees, and ah, you'll get ah, doneness on each side, and the center will have that rich red color. And, you slice for your guests per order...it will guarantee to be a hit.

Well, that's three recipes today: ah, shrimp, tuna, and salmon over the charcoal grill. I know you'll have success with all of them.