Ask The Chef: How do I choose fish at the grocery store?
Fresh salmon (Photo by Clairity/Flickr)
Question: How do I judge the quality of fish at the grocery store when it’s been filleted and cut up already?
Answer: Ideally, judging a whole fish gives you more test points to look at. This is especially true for fish like snapper and bass. I suggest buying them whole (if possible) and either fileting them yourself or have your fishmonger do it. Still, there are some things you can do to to ensure you are getting good fish.
First, find a good fish monger. Don’t think for a minute that a high-end grocery store guarantees great fish. Some do and some don’t. There are many fish mongers in town, so try a bunch and see who will talk to you about quality. A good fish monger should let you smell the fish, which should immediately indicate how fresh it is. A good fish should smell like the sea: sweet and briny. In fact, the smell of the store should tell you something too. Good fish stores don’t smell like fish, they smell like any other store. Shellfish and cartilaginous fish (fish with no skeletons, like monk fish, shark, and skate) will begin to excrete ammonia as they break down, so if you get a whiff of this, avoid it.
Second, you can poke the fish. Push your finger into the flesh and see if it springs back. If it leaves a dent and doesn’t spring back, that fish is ready for the parts department: don’t get it. Cut fish may not spring back as quickly, but it shouldn’t feel mushy.
If purchasing a whole fish, you can look at the eyes. Over time, the eyes of a fish get cloudy. The clearer they are, the more recently they came out of the water. The internal cavity on the belly of the fish should smell like the sea too. Also, the gills should be deep red. If they are black or pale, don’t buy the fish.
Another thing to be wary of is rapid thawing of fish. I often see this with scallops, but it can happen with any kind of seafood. Rapid defrosting can change the flesh texture considerably. In North America, it’s almost impossible to find fresh shrimp. It’s hard to describe what improperly thawed or frozen scallops look like, but if you walk around St Lawrence, you will see differences in the color and texture of fish like salmon. You can also go to a lower end grocery and look at “previously frozen” items…sometimes, like with salmon, you can see that the fish appears washed out and will be a little mushy, as the cells rupture during the defrosting process.
Matt Kantor is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in New York. He has worked in kitchens including Picholine (New York), Gayle and Tangerine (Philadelphia), and Fenouil (Portland). He now works in Toronto and runs Little Kitchen, a catering company that will cook fantastic food in your own home. He also cooks for the monthly event, Secret Pickle Supper Club. Follow Matt on Twitter.
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