All photos by Christopher Pearce

How to pan-fry fish perfectly every time

27 Mar 2026

Chef

Nail the buying, storing and cooking of fish with these tips from the king of fish, Josh Niland

The idea of finding your fishmonger and becoming friends with them, and they give you all the best stuff, is a romantic one. In the best case, you're going somewhere that you can see good quality fish, where you can ask the person selling it, “What would you want to take home for your dinner?” That’s a privilege, however, and when you're feeding four kids, and the supermarket's the only option, it may be a different story.

Regardless of where you’re buying your fish from, and whatever your budget, here are my tips for buying, transporting and storing that fish, and most importantly, how to nail cooking that fish in the pan, with a perfect crispy skin, every time.

Buying your fish

Use all of your senses to purchase a fish. If they allow you to touch, then wonderful, but it's not likely these days that they'll let you pick anything up. So, just do the best that you can, following a few key tips.

Firstly, if the fish smells of anything more than the ocean, there's a problem, and anything with concave rather than convex eyes should be left behind. You want to purchase something that has quite bulbous, beautiful eyes.

Next, look at the fish in more detail. If you're buying a whole fish with scales on, you want to see a full coat of armour that's unafflicted by any kind of damage – no hook or bite marks, cuts or bruising. The more white slime or mucus it has on the outside, the more indicative it is that it’s very fresh; the less slime that it has, and the drier it looks, the longer it's been out of the water. If you can see it, you want to buy something that has translucent, glassy, opalescent flesh. If it looks quite milky, foggy and dull, almost as if it's already been cooked, I promise you will not have a good time with it.

Whether you’re feeding two, four or five, don't ask the monger to cut it into fillets – cook it as one large piece, then cut it after it's cooked. It gives you a longer threshold of tolerance for how much heat you can put through it, and it holds its shape better. It’s also easier to put a probe thermometer into a larger piece of fish and get a gradient that's consistent from edge to edge. If you're cooking for four guests and you're balancing four fish fillets in a frying pan and trying to get them cooked all perfectly, and one of them falls over, you end up in a tricky spot.

Remember, get the mongers to do all the tasks that you don't want to do – the scales, the offal, etc. – but ask them to do it for you without washing it. Never wash fish.

Transporting and storing your fish

This is important: ensure the monger gives you an ice pack, or you've got some kind of cold transportation to take the fish home with, because every minute a fish isn't kept as close to 0°C as you can, the quicker it deteriorates and starts to spoil.

Once you get it home, get it out of whatever wrapping or packaging that it might be in, put it onto a trivet or a cake rack, set it over a small tray or small plate, and then get it straight into your refrigerator, unwrapped, uncovered, completely exposed. Let it sit there, ideally overnight, or at least for two hours to allow the fan in your fridge to start drying the surface of the skin. This isn't a practice we do at the restaurant [Saint Peter, in Sydney], but this is the best domestic solution. Usually, people purchasing a fish for dinner buy it on the morning of the day they're going to eat it. It's counterintuitive and goes against any mum and dad advice that you've grown up with, but you don't need to rush it. Once you get that surface dryness on the skin specifically, then you know that you're going to have a more enjoyable time cooking that fish.

Regarding buying frozen/freezing fish, my only issue is usually fish gets frozen because it was an inferior product to start with, but the concept is the same, you just have to keep it dry in the processing. There's no prejudice that fresh is better than frozen; it's just the system or the way that it gets handled and processed initially before freezing that is then the key to a successful outcome. I would suggest making sure that it is in a freezer bag before going in, to ensure that you're not getting too many crystals building up that start to burn the fish. You also don't want to be deep freezing for long periods of time.

Mastering pan-frying fish

Now you’re ready to cook. Pull the fish out half an hour before you're going to cook it, so that you can start to temper it a little bit. Equipment-wise, for perfect crispy skin – hamachi, red mullet and John Dory are some of the best species for crispy skin – you’ll need a really good cast-iron pan. Avoid non-sticks – the only way a fish skin will stick to your frying pan is if it's a wet fish put into a pan that can't really hold its temperature or isn't quite hot enough in the beginning. A fish weight is also handy.

When it comes to which fat to use, people throw around many different oils as being the best, but use something that you have the budget for. I enjoy cooking with ghee because it can go up to a very high temperature without breaking down too quickly, and it's got a great flavour. When I barbecue, I'll always brush the fish skin with olive oil, because I find the colouring that you get is very different.

I don’t pre-season the fish when I’m pan-frying; I season during the cooking process and just before serving (see below). I tend not to use fine salt for seasoning fish, because I find it to be too harsh. However, if I'm crumbing, then I use fine salt because it clings to the batter better than a flake. I don’t use pepper when pan-frying fish because the temperature threshold that you need to cook the skin means you would be burning the pepper and killing it before you do any good to your fish. However, when you crack lots of fresh black pepper onto beautifully crumbed golden fish, you get all the floral aromatic qualities of the pepper that you've never quite smelled before – I think of pepper as truffle.

First, put the ghee into the cast-iron pan. I have it so that you've got a thin film across the pan. Generally speaking, if I'm cooking approximately one to two portions of fish in a standard 28-centimetre frying pan, then I'm using 50ml of ghee. Get it to a point over medium heat where you're getting a haze over the pan and a light smoke. You really don't want to play around with the heat too much.

Next, pop the fish into the pan, away from you, so that you don’t splash fat on yourself. Place the fish weight, or a saucepan, on top of the fish at its thickest point at this stage – depending on the species of fish, between one and one and a half kilos worth of weight. This will create surface area contact from edge to edge. Allow the fish to sit in position for at least a minute, then move the fish off that first area and reposition it into a new place within the same pan and move the weight onto the next part of the top of the fish that you want to focus on. As heat's rising in the pan, it's collecting on top of the stainless steel weight and starting to conduct heat to the surface of the flesh on the top. You're creating a little vacuum of heat around the fish. Some people would argue that it starts to steam, but that would only be the case if you were to put something directly on top, without ventilation. Proceed for another minute or so in this position, making sure that you're keeping an eye on the temperature of the pan – don't let it get away from you.

Now, after approximately two minutes, you will have developed this really nice light golden colour across the skin, but I wouldn't imagine that you've done a lot of cooking of the flesh. If you're cooking an inch-thick piece of cod, for example, you're probably 20% of the way through the cooking at this point. So, take the weight off, drain the initial fat from the pan completely, and then add the same amount of ghee back to the pan. Do so over the flesh, so the fat coats the surface, drips down the sides of the fish and back down to the pan. Season with a little flaky sea salt at this point, too. Then the weight goes back on top of the fish, and the new fat acts as a conductor, so that as the heat rises again, you're starting to accelerate the speed of the heat moving over the surface of the fish, so you start to cook it from the top down.

"Always instruct your guests to eat from the thinner side of the fish to the thick end to allow it to continue to cook"

In the case of having a thick fish, I would suggest, at this point, taking the weight off completely, and then putting it in the pan into a 180°C oven and leaving it cooking on the skin side. You want to cook it until you have an area about the size of a penny in the middle of the fish that is underdone, opaque. Then, remove it from the oven, return it to a very low heat and allow the skin to crisp again for a further 30 seconds. In terms of total cooking time, you’re looking at around seven to eight minutes for cod thickness, or six to seven minutes for a generic domestic filet that's approximately 180 to 200g for a single portion.

Finally, you need to rest it. When ready, remove the fish from the pan to a warm plate that you're going to be eating it from, turn it over, skin side up, and allow it to rest for 30 seconds to a minute. This allows the rest of the cooking to take place. Season with salt again at this point. If you are serving it with a hot garnish like beans, polenta or mashed potatoes, then cook it for 15 to 20% less, putting the slightly more underdone fish within the warm garnish. The heat rising out of that garnish is then going to continue to cook the fish. Always instruct your guests to eat from the thinner side of the fish to the thick end to allow it to continue to cook.