Godeungeo-gui (Grilled Salted Mackerel)

Variations

• Salted (jaban) versus fresh: jaban mackerel is salted the moment it is landed — Andong gangodeungeo is the famous version. It is already seasoned and goes straight to the pan. Fresh fish needs the twenty-minute salting to pull water out first. They are better thought of as two different starting ingredients.
• Air fryer: 180°C for 12-15 minutes, no need to turn it. Almost no spitting and very little smell, which makes it the most realistic home method, and the skin crisps as well as it does in a pan.
• Oven or fish grill: 15 minutes in a preheated 200°C oven. Better when you are doing several.
• Over charcoal: this is most of what you are tasting in a restaurant version. It is an oily fish and flares up often, so keep the grate high (grilling).
• On a bed of radish: lay thick slices of Korean radish in the pan and the fish on top. It cannot catch, and the radish soaks up the fat and becomes a side dish in its own right.
• Braised instead: the same fish simmered with radish in a soy sauce becomes a completely different dish. Grilling is dry heat and braising is moist, and the flesh behaves differently (dry heat and moist heat).
• Building the meal: with doenjang jjigae or kongnamul-guk, plus sigeumchi-namul, kongnamul-muchim and kkakdugi, this is a full baekban spread. Other seafood dishes here are chueotang, ganjang-gejang and myeolchi-bokkeum.

Tips

• If it is salted fish, add no salt. The commonest mistake here and the only irreversible one. Packaging saying jaban or gangodeungeo means it is already cured. You can pull salt back out by soaking in rice-rinsing water or milk for ten minutes, but that is much harder than not adding it (salt and seasoning).
• Take out the black membrane. A large share of what people call fishiness lives in that lining and in residual blood. Thirty seconds rubbing it away removes half the smell.
• A dry surface is the whole condition. Wet skin boils its own water first, and while that happens the surface is stuck at 100°C and no browning starts. Salting to draw water out and then wiping it off are two halves of the same job (browning).
• Heat the pan first, oil second. Fish skin laid on a cold pan bonds chemically to the metal. Three minutes of preheating, then oil, puts a layer of fat between skin and steel (heat control, cooking oils).
• Do not touch it for five minutes. The skin contracts as it cooks and lets go by itself. The moment you lift a corner to check is the moment it tears. When the fish slides if you shake the pan, it is ready to turn.
• Skin side first. The skin needs the longer contact to crisp; the flesh side only needs three minutes. Reversed, the flesh overcooks.
• Take it off the moment it is done. Mackerel is oily but its protein sets fast, and another minute or two makes it dry. No resistance to a chopstick is the end point.
• Flour thinly, or not at all. A dusting on the skin side helps it release, but a thick coat turns into batter and the skin texture disappears.
• Managing the smell: open a window and put the extractor on before you start. The rice wine helps, but by far the biggest improvement is moving to the air fryer.
• Flake leftovers off the bone. Reheated whole it dries out, so it is better picked off and stirred through rice or packed into rice balls (reviving leftovers).
• Lemon at the end. Squeezed on early, the acid whitens the surface protein. Squeeze it at the table (serving temperature).