Seared Scallops with Herb Butter

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Scal­lops are prob­a­bly my favorite seafood item — I used to order them, quite con­sis­tent­ly, at restau­rants when I was in the mood to splurge a bit but still always felt some­what guilty spend­ing so much on (at least, quan­ti­ta­tive­ly) so lit­tle; so I thought I would try to see if I could cook them for myself. I was delight­ed to find that scal­lops are rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward to pre­pare! So much so, in fact, that I no longer order scal­lops when I eat out, since it’s much more cost-effec­tive to cook them myself.

I like to sear them in a (rather epony­mous­ly named) herb but­ter that you can make by mix­ing togeth­er a stick of room tem­per­a­ture but­ter, about 2 sprigs of thyme, and 1 sprig of rose­mary, in a small bowl with a spoon. The quan­ti­ty of thyme and rose­mary list­ed is an approx­i­ma­tion — I don’t nor­mal­ly mea­sure and usu­al­ly go by eye, so you can add more or less as you see fit.

Scoop the but­ter mix onto a sheet of parch­ment paper, and roll the ends togeth­er to cre­ate a makeshift sort of cylin­der (it looks a bit like a giant piece of can­dy, does­n’t it?), and then refrig­er­ate it for about an hour. Per­son­al­ly, I like to make the but­ter a day or so in advance so that I can refrig­er­ate it overnight; but you can just as eas­i­ly refrig­er­ate it for less time, or even use it as is at room tem­per­a­ture, depend­ing on your pref­er­ences. You also won’t need all of it, so you can save it in the fridge for your dai­ly cook­ing — I use this herb but­ter on any­thing from pota­toes, to salmon, to biscuits.

Mov­ing on to the scal­lops, a few quick notes:

• If nec­es­sary, remove the side mus­cle before cook­ing them (a lit­tle flap of tis­sue on the side).
• After rins­ing the scal­lops under cold water, make sure to pat them as dry as pos­si­ble — this will help you get that nice sort of brown crust on the top and bottom. 
• When cook­ing the scal­lops, make sure they do not touch each oth­er; if they do, they may cre­ate steam that will make it less like­ly you will get the afore­men­tioned nice brown crust.

Bear­ing that all in mind, heat a clean pan over high heat. When the pan is hot, add in about 2 table­spoons of the herb but­ter, and an extra sprig of thyme. Low­er the heat to medi­um high, then place the scal­lops onto the pan. 

Sprin­kle light­ly with salt and pep­per, then cook for about 2 min­utes before flip­ping them over. Light­ly sprin­kle the oth­er side with salt and pep­per, and then cook for anoth­er 2 min­utes. I sea­son them as they are cook­ing because in my expe­ri­ence, if you sprin­kle them with salt before­hand, they dry up and devel­op unsight­ly white spots on their surface.

Remove the scal­lops from the pan and serve hot. I like to serve them with a lit­tle bit of lemon for the sake of fla­vor, and some micro­greens for the sake of appear­ance — to each their own!

And that’s real­ly all you need to have a nice scal­lop din­ner. It’s much less pricey than order­ing the same at a restau­rant — scal­lops sell for about $25–29 per pound if you buy them at the super­mar­ket, ver­sus maybe $30–40 for a sin­gle plate if you eat out — so I can’t rec­om­mend high­ly enough that you give cook­ing them your­self a whirl!

 

Pho­tog­ra­phy by Wil­son Tang