Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale)

Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes

Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale)

As usual, the simplest things work wonderfully! Using coarse salt for cooking fish is very easy and it doest not require any particular skill. Most of the fish restaurants in Italy serves this dish as a second course but doing it at home will cost you peanuts compared to the price you can pay at a restaurant (quite expensive actually!). For those concerned about using salt for cooking, I can only say that the fish will not be salty at all, the salt is used to protect the fish from overcooking, forming a crust that will work like a cooking pot. It’s a very healthy dish and it requires very few ingredients. Try this recipe with Sea Bass or Sea Bream.
5 from 1 vote
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian
Servings 2
Calories 650 kcal

Equipment available on Amazon 🎁

Oven Dish
Kitchen Scales
Italian Apron
Serving bottles
Classic Italian Cooking

Clicking on equipment pictures takes you to Amazon where you can buy the items. We get a small revenue share of anything you buy which helps keep the site running.

Ingredients
 

  • 1 Sea Bream of about 500 g (1.1 lb) weight
  • 1 Rosemary sprig
  • 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) Coarse salt About the salt: a small size fish fitting into a small size oven dish will probably require less salt, vice versa one big fish or two fish into a large oven dish will probably require double the quantity of salt. Try all the different options so that you will know exactly how much salt to use.
  • Extra virgin olive oil for seasoning

Instructions

  • Clean the fish belly, rinse it thoroughly and pat dry with kitchen paper. DO NOT REMOVE THE SCALES.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Lay some salt in the bottom of the oven dish to make a bed, I would say about 5 mm (3/16") thick.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Put the rosemary sprig into the belly.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Add few drops of olive oil inside the belly. You can also put in some finely chopped garlic but I suggest doing this the next time you cook this recipe and then you can taste the difference.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Close the fish belly so that when you cover it with salt, the salt will not go inside.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Cover with salt.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • The fish should disappear under a layer of salt. Use just enough salt to cover the whole fish, no more no less. Pre-heat the oven at 200°C (400°F) and then put the oven dish in the oven for about 30 minutes.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • As a rough guide, the fish is cooked when the salt makes a hard crust and the colour of the salt is not white anymore but a kind of light grey/brown. Also, a nice smell will suddenly spread through your kitchen.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Then remove the oven dish carefully from the oven because it will be very hot. Start breaking the crust around the fish shape with the point of a knife.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Do not go too deeply with the knife because we do not want to damage the fish. Then, gently try to make a small hole on the top and continue to enlarge the hole step by step until you can see that you can lift pieces of crust away.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • There you go! You can see the crust and also you can see that the fish skin does not stick at all and protects the fish meat.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • When you have freed the fish, put the fish onto a plate and discard the remaining salt.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Now, take the fish meat and with a knife remove the few salt grains you may find nearby. Put the meat in another dish as shown in the next picture.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Sprinkle with few drops of olive oil and serve it.
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
  • Enjoy!
    Sea Bream cooked in sea salt (Orata al sale) | Seafood recipes
Italian Apron
Serving bottles
Classic Italian Cooking

Nutrition

Calories: 650kcal

Equipment available on Amazon 🎁

Oven Dish
Kitchen Scales
Keyword Seafood
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Published
Categorised as Seafood

By Federico

Federico Pezzaioli is an ex-badass Italian Paratrooper on a mission - to make creating delicious authentic Italian food really easy. He researches, writes and photographs each recipe with the same attention to detail he used to apply to packing his parachute.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating