Day 23: Today's Pick — A Thin Fish Spatula That Made Me Cook More Fish

I did not cook fish at home for a decade. The reason was simple: every time I tried, the skin stuck to the pan, and when I tried to flip the filet, the skin tore. The fish was always good. The fish was never beautiful. I gave up.

A $24 fish spatula has solved the problem. I now cook fish twice a week. This is, quietly, one of the best small cooking purchases I have made.

What it is

An offset spatula with a flat, ultra-thin, slotted blade. The blade is about 5 inches wide, 2.5 inches deep, and around 1mm thick at the front edge. The offset (the bend in the handle) lifts your hand above the pan, so you can slide the blade in flat. The slots let oil drain and reduce surface tension as you lift.

The model I bought is the Mercer Hells Handle, which is industry-standard and costs $24 on most sites. There are fancier versions (Wüsthof makes one for $48), but the Mercer is, in my experience, equal in performance and the fancier ones are not worth the upgrade.

What it does that other spatulas don't

The thinness. A normal spatula is too thick to slide under a piece of fish skin without lifting the skin off the pan. The fish spatula gets between the skin and the pan, lifts the whole filet as a unit, and lets you flip it cleanly.

This is, essentially, the entire trick of pan-cooking fish. Get the pan hot enough that the skin releases on its own, then use a thin enough tool to lift the filet without disturbing the release. The Mercer fish spatula does the second half of that equation.

What it also does well

• Flips eggs (better than a regular spatula, honestly)
• Lifts cookies off a sheet pan
• Plates a piece of cake without crumbling
• Anything else where you need to lift something delicate

How I cook fish now

Hot pan, oil shimmering, salmon (or trout, or branzino) skin-side down, no touching. Three minutes. Skin releases. Slide spatula under. Flip. Two minutes. Done.

This works because the skin protects the fish from sticking. I had been trying to cook fish skin-up for years because I was afraid of the skin. The fish spatula has freed me from that fear.

Care

Wash and dry. The handle is a Hells Handle (high-temp glass-filled nylon), so dishwasher safe. The blade is stainless and won't rust. Mine is two years in and looks brand new.

What I'd do differently

I would have bought it ten years ago. The cumulative cost of "I'm not going to cook fish at home" is, when you do the math on the cost of restaurant fish, enormous.

How to actually buy

Mercer M18110, available everywhere — restaurant supply stores have it cheapest, kitchen stores carry it for $4–5 more, online is in the middle.

Tomorrow: the indie internet radio station I have been leaving on for hours.