fishposting

“my dearest edwina, i have come into possession of four large whelks”

where to start

You'd like to try tinned fish, but you're not sure where to start. Great! There are a few good ways in.

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold TL;DR

I recommend the following brands to get started:

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold Getting started

Before going in, it's worth setting expectations appropriately: compared to fresh fish, tinned fish trades shelf life for texture. Safe tinning demands anaerobic environments, which means adding water, oil, broth, or sauce---and the sauce will have to be liquid enough to evacuate all of the air. High salt levels are typically required for safety, as well. People typically drain water-packed tins; oil from tins can be good in moderation; broth and sauce are meant to be eaten. Tins will often tell you how to eat them, either directly on the packaging or indirectly via nutrition facts (is it given for the whole tin or for "contents (drained)"?).

Okay, let's start with a quick question: do you like tuna salad, a/k/a tuna mayo? If you do, try mackerel; if not, try anchovies. If both of these sound repulsive, consider salmon and trout. I think these are your best starter tins on the way to sardines and shellfish.

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold Mackerel (reviews)

If you like tuna salad already, then getting into tinned fish amounts to trying more interesting things. Mackerel has sustainability bonafides that tuna doesn't while having less mercury than tuna. Good mackerel is also cheaper than good tuna... a win all around!

I'd say your first stop should be boneless, skinless mackerel. It's often water packed and you can treat it exactly like tuna to make a more interesting tuna salad. If you like mackerel salad, try getting mackerel in oil---Patagonia's or Season's grilled---and making spicy garlic mackerel pasta.

Moving beyond boneless skinless mackerel, the Japanese cross-cut treatments of mackerel are delicious: miso-ni and shoyu-ni saba are thick cross cuts of skin-on, bone-in mackerel in miso- and soy-based sauces, respectively. Make sure to heat these up and reduce the sauce a bit---like all sauced tins, the sauce is more liquid that you might otherwise like---but these are killer on a bowl of freshly steamed rice. Check out Hagoromo; avoid J-Basket.

If you try mackerel and don't like it, give anchovies a shot. If you do like mackerel, try sardines.

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold Anchovies (reviews)

If you don't like tuna salad, I'd say the best place to start is anchovies. They're readily available and they have tremendous range: one can amp up a salad dressing, a few add depth to tomato sauce, more gets you to pasta in salsa (a Venetian dish where the pasta sauce is just anchovies and onion). Once you know you like the flavor of anchovies, you can go in deeper: butter some sourdough, top with anchovies and parsley; make a Gilda (a skewered anchovy, piparra pepper, and olive---intense!).

An important note: tinned anchovies do not have indefinite shelf lives, and you will maximize their life and flavor by keeping them in the fridge even before you open them.

If you liked anchovies, you'll probably like mackerel even if you don't like tuna. I'd also recommend trying sardines. If anchovies were the first thing you've tried and you didn't like it, try salmon or clams.

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold Salmon (reviews)

Canned salmon gets a justifiably bad wrap. Weird circular cutouts of salmon steaks, skin and spine included, fit only to be molded into starchy cakes and fried. I'm not into it.

But some much more interesting canned salmon is available: Patagonia Provisions does a vacuum-bagged skin-on salmon fillet that is excellent---and sustainably and selectively fished from wild pink and sockeye salmon. Wildfish offers cans of well-cleaned wild salmon, but is still more expensive than Patagonia. Trader Joe's sells a tin of smoked farmed salmon that is dense and well cleaned---not bad, especially if you like their trout.

Tinned salmon will do well on sandwiches and salads, pastas, rice bowls, and fishcakes.

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold Trout (reviews)

Trout is a delicious and accessible fish: fatty (so it takes to canning well) and often sustainably farmed. Trader Joe's sells a pretty good tin; Scout's dill sauce is the star of the show in its offering.

Like salmon, trout will do well on sandwiches and salads, pastas, rice bowls, and fishcakes. Honestly, tinned salmon and tinned trout feel pretty interchangeable to me.

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold Sardines (reviews)

Sardines have depth: sardines in oil are the constrained canvas on which tinned fish artists paint their masterpieces. It's hard to manage that depth as a newcomer!

First, understand that what we commonly call sardines are really two species of herring: pilchards (Sardina pilchardus) and sprats (a/k/a brisling, Sprattus sprattus). Pilchard sardines are bigger (4 in a tin), and are typically eaten well trimmed as round loins; sprats are much smaller (10 or more in a tin, in multiple layers), and are typically eaten less trimmed, with some of the tail attached. The two kinds of sardines are both delicious, but with different vibes. The narrow-bodied, leaner sprats are often sold smokier, while the fattier pilchards are given subtler treatment. Pilchards are typically fished off the coast of Morocco; sprats more often come from the North Sea and other northern waters.

So: where to start? King Oscar sells both and does an admirable job, and I recommend them for sprats. To start with pilchards I'd rcommend going for an Iberian brand---Pinhais, Nuri, or Matiz. Wild Planet's oil packed sardines are pretty good, but they are not as good as Iberian tins.

emoji mashup of a fish with a newspaper; it's above the fold Shellfish (reviews for: clams; oysters; mussels; crab; squid)

Tinned shellfish can be delicious---and expensive.

Clams are the easiest. Bar Harbor is a good brand, selling whole bellies and chopped clams. Use them to make a dip or clams linguine. Tinned clams will be a bit tougher than fresh, but will typically have less shell/grit to compensate.

Oysters are also very good, but tougher texturally. Tinned oysters taste quite a bit like fresh article, but with a layer of smoke and less of the fresh, briny punch that raw oysters offer. The place most folks will stumble is texture. There's no way to hide it: they're a little bit mealy. On a saltine with vinegary hot sauce and a cold beer, I think tinned oysters can't be beat---but it's an acquired taste. Probably not a great entry point for most folks. Ekone are the best I've had; Crown Prince is fine.

Mussels are a similar story to oysters: excellent flavors, from escabeche (oil with a splash of vinegar and spices) to Patagonia Provisions' actually spicy mussel offerings. I disrecommend Trader Joe's mussels, as I think they're too small and not super flavorful. Matiz and Patagonia are both excellent. Scout's come with a delicious sauce, but are erratically sized and texturally inferior.

These first three bivalves have the advantage of being very sustainably farmed and naturally low in mercury.

Crab is just fantastic, though I would recommend against snow crab as it is obscenely overfished. It's expensive, and the best crab is sold in tins that need to be refrigerated.

Squid can be great, but the best tins---stuffed or in ink---are a little pricey. Cheaper tins, like Del Sol, offer inferior texture and flavor.

Octopus is also delicious, though I don't eat it much---there's no way to humanely catch it and its only fished as bycatch (and I prefer fishing methods that have less bycatch). Matiz is good.

Folks sell even wilder things---geoduck, goose barnacles, whelk. None of these are for novices.