How to Cook Salmon Perfectly Every Time, According to Michael Mina

There’s an art to cooking fish well and doing it at home can be intimidating, but award-winning chef Michael Mina is here to make it easy to pan sear salmon every time.

Mina is one of the most prolific chefs and restaurateurs in the country, with numerous establishments across America. The founder of the Mina Group, he first received national acclaim for his work at San Francisco’s Aqua, where he served as executive chef for more than a decade and won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: California in 2002. He then went on to open his namesake restaurant, which at its peak was awarded two Michelin stars but has since closed. Mina’s group has moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas and now oversees dozens of restaurants throughout the United States and even abroad (Mina Brasserie in Dubai). Most recently he’s brought his Bourbon Steak to the Big Apple, opening his modern interpretation of the American steakhouse in the JW Marriott Essex House on the southern edge of Central Park.

In this episode of Robb Report’s How to the chef brings his years of experience to this seafood preparation. Mina shows us that the secret to better salmon—as with so much great restaurant cooking—is a lot of butter. Mina uses melted butter as a way to cook the fish gently and infuses that butter with herbs and spices to bring even more flavor to the filet. He then finishes his fish with lemon to cut through the fat of the salmon and make a well-balanced dish you can easily execute at home.