Day 19: Brown Butter Citrus Scallops (Yep) and Homemade Hot Sauce

Daily Tips:

• Make sure you’re buying diver scallops, also known as dry-packed scallops. When you buy scallops that are just labeled “scallops” at the fish counter, these guys have actually been packed in a water based solution that has a lot of preservatives. Not only does that mean they’re a little less fresh, but they’re also soaked. When you go to cook them, they’ll just kind of ooze they’re liquid out and become all shlumpy, instead of getting a beautiful brown sear
• Cook scallops in clarified butter! (Clarified butter is nothing to be afraid of - *just* butter that has been melted down to the point that the butter fat separates from the milk proteins, and the water has all steamed off. Right before your butter becomes brown butter, strain it and you’re good to go). Clarified butter has a higher smoke point, and because you’re cooking the scallops at such a high temp, regular butter will burn. You could use olive oil, but butter flavor goes better with scallops.

            Anything more glorious than a plate of perfectly cooked scallops? I think not. Perfectly cooked scallops in a brown butter sauce? Might as well and just strike me down right now. These were SO GOOD.

Orange brown butter vinaigrette:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup orange juice
• ¼ cup sherry vinegar
• 1 tbsp finely chopped shallot
• 2 tsp grated orange zest
• 4 oz unsalted butter
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Kosher salt

Method

1. In a (non-aluminum) sauce pan, simmer orange juice, vinegar shallot and zest until reduced to ½ cup
2. In a saute pan, melt butter and cook until the milk solids turn deep gold (brown butter!) immediately transfer to a small bowl
3. Whisk mustard into orange juice mixture. Then whisk in butter and olive oil. Season with salt
4. Drizzle all over your scallops!!!

Hot sauce!

Hot sauce is really easy to make and can be totally personalized. Just need a little patience while everything ferments! Takes about 2 weeks start to finish.

Ingredients:

• California red chillies
• Salt
• Vinegar

Method

• Roughly chop your chillies. Do not remove the seeds.
• Combine chillies and 3% salt in a container (e.g., if you had 10 oz of chillies, you would want to add .3 of salt).
• Let sit covered for ~2 weeks at room temp! Chillies are ready when they have started to ferment. A little bit of white fuzz is okay, but anything blue/ green/ black is bad - you’ll want to throw the batch out if that happens.
• When ready, add mixture to a blender and pulse until smooth. Strain into a bowl to remove any seeds/ lumps.
• Add mixture to a sauce pan and add a splash of vinegar
• Heat mixture until just below the boiling point - you want it to be steaming, but no bubbles - this is pasteurizing it to kill off any remaining bacteria
• Bottle and enjoy!