Fishy tales

Dried young pollock can give off a slightly phosphorescent light.

The walleye pollock is so-called because of its large, distinctive eyes.

The easiest way to tell pollock and pollack apart is by looking at the tail: a pollack’s is shovel-shaped, while a pollock’s is forked. It has a high protein count, providing about 41g per 200g fillet, which is comparable to a chicken breast. When steamed or grilled, it contains as few as 180 calories, suiting it to people who are looking to lose weight, as well as those trying to build muscle or improve general fitness as part of a gym routine. Alaskan pollock is frozen within six hours of catch, which helps maintain this nutritional integrity.

Its omega-3 content is also good, which you will probably know goes some way to maintaining healthy brain function, eyesight and blood pressure, while being important for children’s development and growth. Add to this its affordable price tag and it’s an even bigger surprise that it’s still a relatively unknown fish in the UK.

Though like a master of disguise, pollock goes under a multitude of aliases, which can cause confusion. Pollock is also called coley and in any community where it is well-known, there may be different names that correspond to their different sizes. In Scotland, for example, it is often called saithe and it was once a popular sport for American and Scottish children to fish for them with rods and lines off the craggy shores of Shetland and Maine on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Pollock is not to be confused with pollack, a similar fish that’s not as tasty, that has a slightly more grey colouration once filleted and cooked. Some years ago, Sainsbury’s supermarket attempted to re-brand it as ‘Colin’ to make it sound more appealing with limited success.

Alaska pollock also makes for a popular substitute for expensive and over-fished cod and haddock. In Germany and Denmark, it is salted and smoked in a process that gives the flesh a red hue, sold in the former as seelachs or sea salmon. It’s also hugely popular in France, where they consider it a fish of fine quality and regularly used to bulk out a fish soup or make a base for fish stock.

Whether you are familiar with pollock or not, it’s a fish well worth getting acquainted with. Good-value, sustainable, versatile, nutritionally dense and tasty fish are increasingly hard to come by in today’s market, so when you land one, it really should be a keeper.