1,545 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

The secret of cooking until "done"

This is a real chef's skill: being able to look at a fish fillet cooking and say, "Stop – that's enough, it's cooked". I always admire this ability to see at a glance if something is done. It is what sets the professionals apart from us mere amateurs.

And it's true that how fish is cooked is important. If it is underdone, it can be sticky and tasteless, overdone and it dries out and becomes rubbery.

20 K 4.4/5 (25 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Cooking Chef Just Time Fish Meat Measure Thermometer

Last modified on: November 26^th 2012

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

The secret of cooking until "done"

Here we have a problem: the chef's eye (so they say) is only acquired after many years of experience, so it's unlikely that you or I will ever have it! So are our eyes only good for shedding a regretful tear? No – we can dry our eyes and let technology come to the rescue: for food to be cooked just right is simply a matter of temperature. In other words, fish will be perfectly cooked when the temperature in the centre of the fillet reaches 65-70°C (149-158°F).

Measure

Here's the trick: first cook the fish on one side (salted and peppered beforehand). When it looks sufficiently fried or grilled, turn it over and stick an electronic thermometer into the centre.

thermometer cooking

Leave to rest

As soon as the temperature shown reaches 65°C (149°F), remove the fish from the heat, transfer onto a hot plate and cover with aluminium foil. If you leave the thermometer in, you will see that even away from the heat source, the temperature will continue to rise by a few more degrees until it reaches around 70°C (158°F), so the fish will still be cooking.

cooked fish covered

This resting time also allows the juices which have flowed towards the outside to be reabsorbed into the flesh, giving you the tenderest and tastiest fish ever!

You may well be surprised at just how little time it takes to reach this temperature. You will no doubt find that you tended to overcook fish before.

2 observations:
- Certain electronic thermometers are fitted with an alarm which beeps at the chosen temperature, which is very useful.
- You will no doubt see other temperatures, less than 65°C, stated elsewhere. This is a matter of taste.

What about meat?

meat cooking

Chefs – yes, them again – use touch to judge how cooked red meat is.
This is not easy for the amateur but, fortunately for us, help is at hand! You can use the same method for red meat, but this time the temperature to watch for depends on how well done you like it:

52°C (126°F) = very rare (“bleu” = “blue” in French)
60°C (140°F) = rare
65°C (149°F) = medium
70°C (158°F) = well done

But these temperatures are very approximate, as for red meat, you need to establish your own scale, according to your own taste.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20251,6105

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,3065

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,200

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20253,4745

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20258,0333

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Beans in primeur

As I write this, it is the beginning of the short season for fresh beans. If you've never made them before and you're just starting out (and that's a great idea) you'll find that it's a bit time consuming to prepare, you have to shell them once, remove the beans, scald them to remove the skin (and...
June 4^th 202214 K

How to zest a fruit?

You will have no doubt noticed that many recipes call for the zest of citrus fruit. The zest is that outer layer of the skin which adds so much flavour to a dish. There are many different ways to peel off the zest and various tools are available. Here is a summary of the “dos and don'ts” of...
November 5^th 201347 K3.8

The baker always gild twice

I've already told you about gilding, the beaten whole egg that is spread with a brush on anything that needs to brown in the oven: puff pastry, pastries, etc. and that professionals use a lot, I'm going to come back to this to clarify a bit how to do it, and give you a professional tip.
June 9^th 201935 K4.2

Small, regular pieces

When we cook, bake or pastry, we often have to cut food into small pieces, often cubes, to incorporate them into a recipe or preparation. How do you get regular pieces fairly quickly?
November 28^th 202012 K4.5

Devising a recipe

A question I'm often asked is: how do you come up with your recipes? How do you perfect them? This is something I've already mentioned on this page, but I'll take this opportunity to go into a bit more detail.
October 15^th 201218 K4.4