Cooking Fish In Salt

On Mondays we watch a cooking show on French TV. Last monday they talked about cooking mackerels and sardines by putting them in salt.
I had to try that! So here we go! I love sea food and I love salt!
 I bought a couple of mackerels, and 1kg of cooking salt.

Make sure the fish are fresh. The eyes should be shiny and the gills bright red.

They cut the fish to get the fleshy parts only.

It's really easy to get the flesh of the mackerels. Cut along the back bone at the top of the fish. You should feel the fishbones as you're cutting along. Once you've done both sides of the back bone, make an incision  near the tail and another one at the head on each side as well. 

You cans see on the second picture that the fleshy parts are off the bones. Get rid of the guts, cut in half.

I like to rinse the flesh once I'm done with that part, because blood gives a terrible taste to the meat.

I chose to keep the skin on, because it was advised in the video I watched but if I had to do it again I would take the skin off. It was impossible to eat! Very slimy and hard to cut with a knife.

Then place the salt in a container, about 1cm thick of salt and place the meat. Cover in salt until you can't see the fish. Place the dish in the fridge.
I've heard that it should take 15mn for the salt to cook the mackerel but it wasn't enough for me. As the fish is getting cooked the flesh becomes milky pink and the skin wrinkles.
I left it for 30mn and still it was pretty raw here and there. I guess it is because the mackerels I bought were rather large and the meat was thick.
Then rinse the salt off the fish at the tap.

Tadaaaa! :) It was not that good actually :D I LOVE mackerel but it's full of fat and you can really taste it when cooked this way. Tonight I'm going to try that with sardines and give an update. I kept the salt I used for the mackerels.

But concerning mackerels I would do thing differently.

First I would take the skin off (it would probably help the meat to cook faster) and second I would let it in the salt for at least 45mn.

I love the idea of cooking fish with salt. That's why I won't give up so fast. :)

Haha! And I took this picture. Cracks me up! I found this die with letters on it on the bathroom floor(my cat probably played around with it) and  I realised it read TP. This is art. :)