One Pound Of Sustainable Seafood...
Now that summer is nearly here, many people turn to seafood as a naturally healthy dinner option.
We think of grilled wild Alaska salmon, seared tuna, and shellfish. But, as household budgets get tighter and food prices increase, how should we navigate the seafood counter? How can we justify $35 for a pound of wild Copper River king? How can we serve a wild seafood affordably to friends and family? How can we incorporate seafood into our daily meals without blowing the budget entirely?
A fair amount of seafood passes through my little kitchen each year. Hence, I've thought about and addressed these questions many times over the years. So, last spring I wrote an article for Real Food Magazine entitled "One Pound of Spectacular Seafood." For that ten-page article, I created five recipes with each recipe using only one pound of sustainable seafood. I created the one pound restriction because I knew it would truly challenge me to be creative and stay within a reasonable budget. It was an interesting exercise to buy one pound of fish or shellfish and then stare at it on the kitchen counter, wondering what I could do with it and how I could stretch it deliciously and successfully!
In that article, I featured an elegant Alaskan King Crab pasta for six, Curried Mussel Appetizers for 4 from Kaspar's, Kid Friendly Wild Salmon Sliders for eight, Panko-Coated Oysters for four, and Whitefish Tacos for eight. In order to meet my challenge, I decided to take seafood off the center of the dinner plate! I created recipes that featured seafood as an appetizer, a child-friendly snack, an hors d'oeuvre, and a main course dish. I encourage you to do the same.
When you walk up to the seafood counter and find yourself in sticker shock, start to think beyond the the dinner plate! Take the seafood off the center of the dinner plate and think about serving that seafood as a starter, in a sandwich, as an addition to a pasta dish, tossed into eggs, or wrapped up in a tortilla with shredded lettuce. Just because sustainable seafood is more expensive, it doesn't mean that you have to skip it completely. You just have to swim against the tide and find some new (or not so new) ways to enjoy it.
As I like to say, less is often more. And, in the case of seafood, it's definitely better than none!
Photo by Melissa A. Trainer
--Melissa A. Trainer
Jon Rowley on May 25, 2011 at 05:11 AM
Good post, Missy. Heads and carcasses are a good source of fish pieces and bones for broths. The last king salmon head I bought was .99/lb vs $20 plus for filets.
Melissa Trainer on May 25, 2011 at 08:59 AM
Thank you, Jon! We always appreciate your thoughtful input! Happy Salmon Season to you! Missy
jeff on May 25, 2011 at 08:01 PM
"How can we justify $35 for a pound of wild Copper River king?"... well for starters it's frickin amazing fish that simply has no equal in the farmed fish industry. It is rather pricey tho...
Two things you can do to make fish an everyday meal:
1) Serve smaller portions, not only is this kinder on your budget but also on your belt line.
2) Buy in bulk. I buy line caught wild King salmon from a fishing collective in Alaska. I buy 100lbs at a time and the fully loaded cost including air freight to my local terminal is $13 a lb. The fish is vacuum packed as filets that are between 1-2lbs each so I am getting 100lbs of edible fish, and each filet is a meal for our family. This is seriously fantastic fish, the meat doesn't have the weird texture that store bought fish has when it goes through a freeze-defrost cycle more than once and changes hands many times from the boat to the store.
In our house we each fish on average 2 days a week but on some weeks as much as 4 days. Salmon is preferred (my wife is allergic to halibut, a favorite of mine) but also rock cod, snapper, and a variety crustaceans.
Red Wing Store on November 15, 2011 at 03:55 PM
I like you on facebook and follow through google reader!