How To Make Pan Fried Scallops

This is how to make pan-fried scallops. So to start off with, you need a good product, nice fresh scallop, nice firm meat. Now, these scallops have been cleaned up, so the little sinewy bit on the outside has been removed, and on this side, there would be like a whiter, lighter colored muscle that needs removing or else it cooks up really tough or tight.

So, they're ready to go. Now, these are going to take about one minute either side. The idea is have a nice hot pan, and we just want to gently glaze the scallop so it's got a nice caramelized color, and if this were a piece of meat, then it would be medium-rare by the time it's finished cooking, so we retain that lovely moisture inside.

And today, what we're going to do is scallops with black pudding and caramelized apple, with a little side of meat sauce. It's a classic dish, but with the sweet scallops and sharp apple, and the meat from the black pudding, it works wonderfully. So, we're just going to season our scallops up with a little bit of herbs and little bit of rock salt, got a little bit of ground white pepper, just a minuscule amount.

We need our pan to be nice and warm. What we don't want to do is stew the scallops so they'll sort of cook in their own juice, and we want that lovely caramel color on them. Right, now, our pan is nice and warm, we're just going to put a little drizzle of oil in there.

We're going to put our scallops in there, and in the same pan, we're going to put a granny smith apple because these hold their shape when they're cooked and they're nice and sharp, and we've got two slices of black pudding. So, we're just going to look on the bottom of these scallops. I'd say they need about a minute either side, and as soon as we see a nice caramel color on the bottom, we're going to turn those over, and the apple and the black pudding are probably going to take about the same time to cook.

Right, they've had just under a minute, so we'll have a little look there. Right, as you can see, we've got a nice caramel color on the top. We turn our black pudding over as well, and the apple, and like those scallops, the apple, we want that slightly undercooked as well, so we retain that nice sharpness, and that's what makes this dish so special.

Right, they're about there, so we're going to remove the apple, and as a formality, don't go straight from the pan to the finished plate because you're going to leave a little residue of fat behind, so it's best if it remains on another plate or the chopping board. Right, we're going to put our apple on first, then our black pudding and the scallop on there. When you cut your apple and black pudding, make sure you cut them straight, so you haven't got funny wedges, otherwise everything is likely to topple over.

Now, over here, I've just warmed up some reduced cider with some ground poultry stock, and we're just going to drizzle a little bit of that over the scallops there. And there you are - that's how to cook pan-fried scallops. .