How to bake fish in salt

Discover how to bake a perfect and flavorful fish in salt: a guide with all the tricks to get the crust and cooking times right.
“Elegant fish dinner with very few ingredients?

Here’s how. ”Fish in salt: the only trick you need to know to keep it from becoming dry.”

This recipe celebrates the meeting between tradition and technique: the fish is wrapped in a spectacular salt crust that acts as a natural oven, sealing in moisture and aromas. Breaking the crunchy shell at the table, you will discover incredibly tender and juicy meat, capable of releasing all the essence of the sea in a dish that is as elegant as it is simple to prepare.
For this recipe, I had a nice fish called tanuta. It is a close cousin of the sea bream. It has very delicate and succulent meat.

With this recipe you can use any fish weighing half a kilo (1.1 lbs) or more, usually, in a normal home oven, a fish of about 2 and a half kilos (5.5 lbs) can fit, at most placed diagonally on a baking sheet.

If your fish is bigger and you still want to cook it in your home oven, you can remove its head and instead fill that area with parchment paper to prevent salt from entering the fish.
In any case, with this cooking method, whether with or without the head, the fish should never be scaled. Because the scales will come off when you remove the salt crust.

Consider this for yourself:

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Medium
Rest time: 5 Minutes
Preparation time: 15 Minutes
Portions: 3
Cooking methods: Electric oven, Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients

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1.75 lbs white seabream (or other whole fish)
2 egg whites
21 oz fine salt
as needed roast aromatics
as needed extra virgin olive oil
as needed pepper

How to bake fish in salt

Tools

We need:

1 Knife
1 Cutting Board
1 Baking Tray
1 Parchment Paper
1 Electric Whisk bosch

Steps

How to bake fish in salt

In my recipe, I add a bit of homemade aromatics, click here to find out how I make them.
Once the egg whites are whipped,
gradually add the salt while stirring. We need to create a kind of pasty mixture.
At this point, we take the fish and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
In the fish’s belly, we only put homemade aromatics. I avoid adding other herbs because I have the option of these aromatics that are easy to make.
But if you don’t have fish aromatics, you can put bay leaves, some lemon slices, and other herbs of your choice in the belly.
To complete, we will put rolled parchment paper inside the belly, which will prevent the fish from absorbing too much salt inside.
With the help of a spatula or with your hands, take the pasty mixture of salt and egg whites and cover the entire fish, which should remain completely sealed, like inside a sarcophagus. To finish, sprinkle the surface of the sarcophagus with more fine salt.
If the tail is too big and should remain outside the baking tray, wrap it first in parchment paper. However, this will only happen with large-sized fish.
Place the fish with its salt coating in the preheated oven at 392°F in static mode, and bake it for the times indicated depending on the weight.
Baking times in a preheated oven:
Half a kilo (1.1 lbs) of fish bakes in fifteen to twenty minutes.
One kilo (2.2 lbs) in twenty-five to thirty minutes,
One and a half kilos (3.3 lbs) in thirty-five to forty minutes, and so on.
So, adjust according to the size of the fish.
Usually, in a traditional-sized home oven, a fish up to two and a half kilos (5.5 lbs) can fit, placed obliquely in the tray.
After the time has passed, take the fish out of the oven, and let it rest for 5 minutes in the tray with its salt sarcophagus, once the last 5 minutes have passed, you can open the sarcophagus starting by making incisions at the height of the fins on the back and under the belly.
Following this line with the tip of a knife and slightly loosening the sarcophagus which will come off in pieces or entirely.
Lastly, free the belly from the parchment paper,
Now you can completely debone the fish and serve it portioned or whole on a serving platter.
Season simply with oil and pepper. If you like, you can also add chopped parsley or the typical Salmoriglio sauce. It’s a dressing prepared. With lemon oil, garlic, minced and oregano, salt, and pepper, slightly emulsified to create a little cream.
Here’s how to bake fish in salt.