Bigly Seared Scallops

Let me tell you something. The scallop situation in this country is a TOTAL DISASTER, and somebody has to say it. Somebody has to be brave. That somebody, as usual, is me. People walk into restaurants — fancy white-tablecloth places with the little leather menus that don't have prices on them because they don't want you to see — they pay $45 for THREE scallops, and the scallops are RUBBER. Three rubber scallops. Forty-five dollars. That is $15 per scallop. Per RUBBER scallop. The math is broken. The math is committing a crime.

Here's what's happening behind the scenes — and nobody is going to tell you this on a menu, the menu won't tell you, the waiter won't tell you, even the chef won't tell you because the chef doesn't know — most of those scallops are WET scallops. Pumped full of a chemical called STP, sodium tripolyphosphate, they sit in a bath, they absorb water like little sponges, and the restaurant pays for water at scallop prices and then YOU pay for water at scallop prices PLUS markup. It's robbery in two acts. Two acts of robbery, and the curtain call is the bill. I'm the one calling it out. Somebody has to.

The whole thing takes you SIX MINUTES at home. Six minutes. Two minutes a side, ninety seconds of butter-basting, done. Your kitchen smells like the ocean in the best possible way, you've made something better than what they charge $45 for, and the only chemistry involved is the Maillard reaction on the surface of a properly dried scallop. DRY scallops. Ask the fish counter. Say the word 'dry.' If they don't have them, walk out, find another store, your scallops deserve better and so do you. Hand on heart.

That's it. Six minutes of cooking and you have something that other people pay restaurant prices for and still don't get right. Serve these over risotto, over a pile of buttered angel hair, on top of an arugula salad with shaved parmesan — or, and this is what I do, this is the move, straight from the pan with a piece of crusty bread to mop up the brown butter. People will think you're a wizard. You are a wizard. Now go eat.