Other flavours of mackerel

At the beginning of the year, I started cooking mackerel. I wrote about my saba shioyaki here.

After cooking it several more times (and buying frozen mackerel two more times - each packet comes with 3-4 fillets), I decided that I should look for different recipes to cook with mackerel.

I found several recipes from Jamie Oliver, and some were really simple.

The other day, I grilled my mackerel after marinating it in honey and orange juice (plus some orange zest too). It was inspired by this recipe, though in the end it was nothing similar since I changed it a whole lot :P 

The skin looked nice until the very end when the liquid had evaporated, then it caramelized and turned black. Taste-wise, it was okay.

Then today I tried out this simplest recipe which involves just grilling the mackerel and adding lemon juice. It even starts from a cold pan, definitely a recipe for children! And you don't even need oil!

Basically we put the mackerel fillets skin-side down in a non-stick pan, then turn on the heat to high. Then we season it a bit, and leave it there for 4-5 minutes for the skin to crisp up. After that, flip and just cook for 30 more seconds. Then comes the flavouring: Put lemon juice in the pan (without touching the crispy skin), and shake the pan. The recipe says to turn off the heat before giving the pan a shake, but I forgot, and left my lime juice (I used lime because it was cheaper...and a lime is smaller than a lemon, so it suits my portion :P ) there to evaporate while soaking into the fish.

Overall, it was nice. A little bit too sour, maybe? But it was fine eaten with rice.

The end result looks practically like my saba shioyaki... I think that I will try this don't-touch-for-four-minutes method with saba shioyaki in future.

Also, since we use lime here, the fish didn't need to be treated with cooking wine. I might also just try it with orange juice next time, but I'm not sure whether that would be acidic enough to take away the fishy smell.