December 2, 2014 — Scallops are sweet, mild and tender–ideal for anyone with a casual affinity for shellfish. If they are really fresh, you can eat them raw. Yet they are rarely served at home. This is actually a terrific time of the year to try scallops in the Northeast that come out of Peconic Bay in Long Island and Taylor Bay in Nantucket.
Cooking them correctly requires a few simple steps. The most important one is to sear them well enough to create a golden crust without overcooking them in the center. To strike this balance, use dry room-temperature scallops.
“You need to buy dry sea scallops,” says chef Ed McFarland of Ed’s Lobster Bar in NYC. The difference between dry and wet scallops is enormous, yet it is only subtly advertised. That’s for a reason. Wet scallops are injected with water to puff them up and make them look bigger. They seem impressive, but the added water content dilutes the flavor and makes it too moist to develop that crust.
“If you buy a wet scallop, it’s almost impossible to get a nice sear on it,” McFarland says. Pay a bit more to get the unadulterated stuff: dry scallops. At Ed’s Lobster Bar, McFarland uses diver scallops, which is ”a nice way of saying that they actually go down to the bottom and pick it up as opposed to dredging for them.”