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Broiled Mackerel with Black Butter
Take some mackerel, open and remove the bones, spread a little butter and sprinkle some pepper and salt over them. Place the fish on a gridiron and broil over a clear fire. Put a pat of butter in a saucepan and stir it over the fire until it is richly browned, then squeeze in some lemon juice. Place the fish on a hot dish, arrange some sprigs of parsley around, pour over the butter and serve while it is very hot.
A three-ingredient dish where the only real technique is knowing when to pull the butter off the heat. Oscar gives no quantities, so the proportions are up to the cook.
- The hinge: the butter"Black butter" (beurre noir) is butter cooked past foaming until the milk solids brown and smell nutty, then stopped with acid. It goes from nutty to burnt and bitter in a matter of seconds, so work in a light-coloured pan where you can see the colour, and have the lemon juice ready at the side of the stove before you start.
- QuantitiesFigure one whole mackerel of about 3/4 to 1 lb per person, and 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter per fish for the sauce, plus a little more for coating before broiling. The juice of half a lemon is enough for four fish.
- "Open and remove the bones"Most likely a butterflied or kited mackerel, split and the backbone lifted out so the two sides stay joined. A fishmonger will do it; otherwise ask for two fillets per person and broil them skin side up.
- Gridiron over a clear fireA "clear fire" is coals burned down past flame so nothing sooty touches the fish. A charcoal grill is the direct equivalent. Indoors, use the broiler element at full heat with the fish 3 to 4 inches below it on an oiled rack.
- TimingA butterflied mackerel needs roughly 5 to 7 minutes total, mostly skin side toward the heat, and does not need turning if the flesh side is only 3/4 inch thick. Mackerel is oily and forgiving of high heat but dries out fast once past done; take it off when the thickest part just flakes.
- Buy it freshMackerel spoils faster than almost any other market fish because of its high oil content. It should smell of nothing but sea water and the eyes should be clear. Anything with a hint of rancidity or ammonia will not be rescued by butter.
- ServingWarm the platter properly. Browned butter tightens and dulls the moment it hits a cold dish, which is why the original insists twice on heat.
Mackerel with black butter is a plain fisherman's-port dish: the fish is oily and assertive, and browned butter sharpened with lemon cuts it without a flour-thickened sauce. Beurre noir and its gentler cousin beurre noisette are French classical preparations, most familiar in the English-speaking world with skate, and the pairing with mackerel follows the same logic of acid against richness. The brevity of the entry assumes a cook who already owns a gridiron and needs only to be told the order of operations.