Cooking Scallops Recipes

Scallops are a beautiful delicately flavoured meat, and require the shortest of cooking times. Overcooking makes the meat tough, and results in loss of flavour.

You will need about 4-5 scallops per person, depending on the size, and which course you are cooking.

In this simple lesson, we will learn how to cook scallops that are pan-fried.

Make sure that before you start, you dry the scallops on a piece of kitchen paper, and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper on both sides.

Scallops must be thoroughly dry when they go into the pan.

You will need to coat a heavy based pan (I use prefer to use a 12" pre-seasoned skillet to get the perfect result) with vegetable oil, and leave for a few minutes to get hot. The hotter the better, you want the scallops to caramelised nicely - not stew in their own juices.

Once the pan is hot you can pop the scallops in, they don't need long, depending on size. Roughly about a minute on each side. (they are cooked through when they are no longer translucent)

After you have turned them over, pop a generous sized knob of butter into the pan, and allow to brown slightly. Finish the scallops off by coating them in the butter towards the end of cooking.

Spoon out onto a piece of kitchen paper. You are ready to serve.

In this simple lesson, we will learn how to cook scallops that are grilled.

Start by preheating the grill to a high temperature.

Once the scallops are prepared and dried and seasoned, remove the grill tray and coat the rack with oil so that the scallops don't stick to it.

It is always better to brush your scallops with melted butter before hand, this helps to keep them moist during cooking.

They take roughly a couple of minutes on each side, or until cooked through. Once again this depends on their size.

Once cooked, more of the melted butter can be brushed on for flavour.

In this simple lesson, we will learn how to cook scallops that are poached.

Once the scallops are prepared, dried, and seasoned they are ready to be poached. They can be poached in stock or wine.

You can do this by bringing the liquid to the boil in a skillet, and simmering the single layer of scallops for about 3 to 5 minutes, depending on size, over a moderate heat. They will need to be turned once.

After cooking they can be taken out and placed on a warm plate ready to be served.

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