Hello and welcome back The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here!
This week, I’m going to be featuring fish from the Wild Alaskan Company.
For Christmas, my darling in-laws gifted us with a big box of Alaskan’s seafood and since returning home, I have been having fun trying out different preparations with the fish.
Wild Alaskan Company is mail order, wild-caught, fresh fish that comes to your door on dry ice, frozen. Our box arrived with quite a lot of dry ice still intact and the fish was frozen solid. On the website, they explain that it’s “quick-frozen” into single serving blister packs–presumably right after its caught:
We got an assortment of salmon, halibut, cod and rockfish. I’ve never worked with rockfish, so I’m looking forward to tackling that in the future.
Living in the Bay Area, I have, though, worked with salmon a lot, so that was the first fish that I tackled:
I decided to do a simple, quick sear on the salmon as my first preparation. defrosted the fish in the refrigerator for probably about six hours. Frozen fish has a reputation for being less flavorful and for having a mushy texture. I opened the package of Wild Alaskan and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw:
When I opened the package, there was no smell, which may sound like a funny thing to highlight first, but for those of us with “super-sniffers,” this is a pretty big deal. I love seafood, but a fishy-smelling fish will turn me off right away. So, Wild Alaskan clicked that box with no problem.
Next, I looked at the texture. As you can see from the picture, there is still nice definition to the layers of the fish, and even some “marbling” to note on the left side. The filet had only a couple of stray bones that I could find, so they had boned it before packaging it, explaining the less firm right side of the filet. But overall, the filet was nicely firm, especially for a defrosted-from-frozen piece of fish, and I was pleased. Box two, clicked!
I brined it, as I normally do, and that’s where I ran afoul of the fish, but it was my own fault. The filets that I got were about 3/4 inch thick. The salmon filets I get from my fish guy are usually more like an inch or 1 1/4 inches thick and I can let them brine for 45 minutes to an hour without them soaking up too much of the brine. I let these filets brine for about 40 minutes and my finished dish was on the salty side, but again–my fault.
My fish was also a little overdone, which…was also my fault. I seared the filets on medium-high heat in heavy cast iron for two minutes per side and they were a little overdone. However, the texture was good and the flavor was quite good–very “salmony” but not “fishy.” They would have been about perfect with about 3-3.5 minutes of searing total. Box three, clicked!
Overall, I’m very pleased so far with the Wild Alaskan Company fish–quality, flavor and convenience get high marks. I especially love that the fish is packed in single serving packs–this is great for folks looking for a single serving and/or a busy, working person who wants a nutritious, convenient option for weeknight cooking.
Tune in tomorrow when I put the halibut filets through their paces.
Until then.
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
