Gas-Grilled Salmon Fillets

From America's Test Kitchen Season 10: Salmon—Indoors and Out

Cooking delicate salmon can be tricky. Even using a nonstick skillet, it’s still easy to break the occasional fillet. Introduce that same fillet to a grill, and you’ve got a real challenge. We wanted grilled salmon with a tender interior and crisp skin, and with each fillet perfectly intact.

Part of the solution lay in a procedure we developed to clean the grill thoroughly: Place an overturned disposable aluminum pan over the grate as the grill warms up, trapping hot air and superheating the grate. Just like in a self-cleaning oven, the high heat causes grease and debris to disintegrate. By replacing the disposable pan with foil pressed against the grate, we bumped the temperature up higher, making the technique even more effective. (NOTE: This technique, which works well with metal grill grates, is not advisable for ceramic grill grates, as it has the potential to damage the grates.) We chose thicker salmon fillets, which could stand the heat of the grill for a little while longer before the first turn. To prevent sticking, after preheating the grill for 15 minutes, we brushed it very clean, then coated it with five to 10 layers of oil until it developed a dark, shiny coating. After laying the fillets on the grate, we easily flipped each fillet without even the tiniest bit of sticking.