How To Cook Halibut Cheeks

I'm going to show you how to cook halibut cheeks. I've got about 4 to 6 ounces of the cheeks. Now, these are literally found behind the gills, right behind.

So if you do feel that you want to be cooking them, speak to your fish monger and he will literally just cut them out for you. They're very difficult to sort of attach away from the gill. I've done these today and they're still quite a bit of sinew, so what I'm going to do is literally cut them down into little bite size, little pieces.

Now, on some chef's menus, they have these with risotto and they're very, very tasty as well. The texture is exactly like if you're cooking cod. So don't be too scared if you're cooking cheeks and you don't know how to cook them.

It's absolutely just as easy as cooking or pan frying a fish. So I'm just going to cut it down to little pieces. Very important to take out the sinew from the fish because they're not very digestible, so I'm just going to cut them out and just cut it into little pieces.

I've got a nice hot pan because what I'm going to do now, I'm going to literally drench my pan, a nice bit of hot olive oil, butter at the end of it, if I feel like doing it, and I'm just going to cook it for literally minutes in the pan. It doesn't take long at all. But if you've got a bigger piece like that, then obviously, it's going to take longer as well, but if you were having it as a main course and you wanted to present it more differently, then obviously, just take out all the sinew and just leave them whole.

But I just cut this down because I'm going to put this into a risotto because I think that would be quite nice. So if you just treat it like any other flat, white fish, your haddock, your cod, it's just the very, very same texture and not only that, you know, I've got menus now in kitchens and it's just a great way to get all the meat from the fish. Hot pan, a nice bit of olive oil - like I said, they only need literally a minute or two in the pan, so I wouldn't go too mad on it.

They can go into a sauce if you were to poach them, could be a white wine, tomato sauce, really nice. But like I said, they're going to go in the hot pan there. Just check that's hot.

Salt and pepper. So, on some of my menus, I've got the halibut cheeks with a wild rocket risotto - very, very, very nice. Put them straight in there.

Like I said, you can be frying the bigger pieces depending on what you're going to have for your dish straight in there and the taste from the cheeks is unbelievable. A nice bit of flavour comes from there. I've got a nice little non-stick pan so they don't sit in the bottom there.

I could add onion, some shallots to that, some garlic to give it some more flavour. I could run some fresh herb. But I just want to show you the technique of just cooking the fish so you can go from there and add whatever you want, basically.

Oh good, it's taking seconds. They're starting to turn opaque now which is right what we want. Like I said, all of the smaller bits obviously are going to take a bit less time to cook.

Not too much oil. Only add a bit flavour. So at this stage, you can probably squeeze some lemon juice and spritz some lime, exactly same way as you do fish.

If you like a bit more pepper or salt, I don't have a problem with salt. It can add flavour. It's literally taking me just over a minute now or just quite under a minute.

Just to cook that through. Just try that. Absolutely fantastic.

The taste is coming through now. Perfectly done. I want to take that off.

I'm just going to plate the fish up now and to show you exactly where we're at on this. So if I had my risotto already cooked, all I'd do now is just run that through it and the flavour and the taste from now is just unbelievable. Like I said, I've got this bigger piece so I'm just going to finish it off in the pan.

And we're done now. And here we have it. And that's how I cook my halibut cheeks. .