Getting the most out of frozen fish
These days, fresh is no guarantee that you’re getting the best product
Standing in your grocery store seafood department, you see a counter with fillets of salmon, cod and tuna bedded on ice. Their tenderness beckons. Somewhere nearby, packages of those same fish and more, each fillet vacuum-sealed, wait behind a freezer glass door. They look . . . well, you can’t quite tell, but the labels indicate where the stuff comes from and its sustainability. Which ones will go in your basket?
In many cases, the frozen fish is less expensive and ought to be a slam-dunk. Yet “fresh is best” has been hammered home as a selling point for so many Americans fortunate enough to have the choice that they will opt for what’s on display.
Why go frozen? “It is a major win for sustainability,” says Barton Seaver, the Maine-based chef and seafood educator who once called Washington home. “It decreases waste and takes advantage of seasonal bounty to spread its availability throughout the year.
“From the introduction of micro-misting to more powerful and rapid deep-freeze technologies at lower temperatures, the process has really turned frozen product . . . into a means to capture pristine quality,” he says.
Experts agree about those advances in technology, which can allow consumers to buy fish that is frozen mere hours after being harvested. The “fresh”-looking fish at the counter may be weeks old, and, these days, a good portion of it might be labeled “previously frozen” — all of which means that frozen can be fresher, or at least in better condition.
At the consumer level, though, frozen fish is still seen as less than optimal. You can’t open a package and smell it — a historically fail-safe test of quality — although I can’t remember the last time I saw a supermarket shopper ask to sniff first before her fish gets wrapped in paper.
Wegmans stocks half as much frozen fish as it does fresh, says Steve Philips, the East Coast grocery chain’s seafood group manager. With a few exceptions, the supermarket’s fresh fish on display has not been previously frozen — in part, he says, because Wegmans noticed that its customers “weren’t moving over to the frozen case.” The result is that its seafood department pulls fresh fish after two days in the case and destroys it; none of it is repurposed for in-house use.
Frozen fillets are priced significantly less than fresh at Wegmans, because their shelf life reduces consumer risk and company costs. “There is a misperception that what goes into a frozen package is somehow lesser quality, but that is not the case with anything we sell,” Philips says, adding that any frozen fish treated with chemical additives might be partially to blame. He advises consumers to compare labels when they shop for frozen.
A 2016 study funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation that tested consumer preferences for fresh black cod and coho salmon vs. frozen (both bought at retail) found that the frozen fish, simply baked, were both rated superior or equal to their fresh counterparts.
The study also measured the quality of those frozen and fresh fish, based on the conductivity of cell structure, and found that the overall score of the frozen fish was at least three times higher than the fresh fish.
So, you need to learn about frozen fish to maximize its potential. In return, you get to sample species that come from the Antarctic, such as Chilean sea bass, and enjoy it anytime. And by that I mean you don’t even have to defrost it before you cook it.