You just dropped £5 on some salmon, and after you throw it on the grill or slide it into the oven, a weird white substance starts oozing from the filet. WTF, salmon, WTF?
So what is this white substance? Can you eat it? Is it safe? ARE YOU GOING TO DIE?
First, some bad news — you are going to die, eventually. The good news is it won't be from the stuff sweating out of your salmon, which is completely harmless.
That white gunk seeping from your salmon is called albumin. It's a protein — not fat — that pushes to the surface of the fish when you heat it. "Once this protein reaches temperatures between 140 and 150 degrees, its moisture is squeezed out, and it congeals and turns white," according to America's Test Kitchen.
"There's nothing harmful in it," Donald Kramer, professor of seafood science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, told America's Test Kitchen.
And before you start scheming, know that cooking salmon in a different manner won't prevent albumin from forming. But there are a couple tricks if you want to avoid it.
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One option is to brine the fish. America's Test Kitchen recommends soaking the salmon in a standard brine — one tablespoon of salt per cup of water — for just 10 minutes before cooking. That should minimise the amount of albumin forming on the surface of the fish. But also sounds like a major faff.
Or you could try cooking the fish at a low temperature, according to American goddess of cooking Martha Stewart. Remove it from the heat when the centre is partially opaque and allow it to continue cooking for a few minutes away from the heat. But this solution isn't guaranteed to work (sorry, Martha!) because, as America's Test Kitchen notes, there will always be a certain amount that leaks out — no matter which temperature you cook it at.
