A lot of my clients reveal that they find seafood very intimidating to buy and prepare themselves. Perhaps that’s one reason it has grown so popular in fast food restaurants. If you love seafood but dread the idea of making it for yourself, this chapter is sure to help!
What Goes Into the Perfect Seafood Dish?
White Fish
Most fast food fish sandwiches are made from hoki or pollock. Hoki is a mild white fish that is imported from New Zealand. It is usually frozen before shipping, is generally inexpensive, has few bones, and flakes easily, thus making it a good fish for breading. Pollock is also a delicate-flavored white fish that is a plentiful member of the cod family. Its abundance makes it more affordable than many other species of fish.
Because hoki and pollock are not easily found in grocery stores across the United States and so are not as consumer friendly as some other species (if you do find them, feel free to use them), I usually use cod, haddock, or even red snapper for fish sandwiches. Not only do they all have mild flavors, but they can be pounded gently with a meat mallet if necessary and will keep shape well when breaded.
For these recipes, you definitely want to buy fillets—boneless, usually skinless pieces cut from one side of the fish. Technically, fillets shouldn’t have skin on them, but it’s often left on because some people argue that the skin adds great flavor, even if you don’t actually eat the skin. Others like skin on the fillets because it can make grilling easier since the fish is then less likely to fall apart. If the fillets at your grocery store have skin on, the butcher or fishmonger is generally happy to remove it at no charge.
Because the tail of a fish moves a lot more than the body does as it swims, the meat found near the tail is often not as tender as the meat near the head or in the body portion. Thus you should always ask for the thickest piece to ensure that it comes from the head-end versus the tail-end.
Once home, always be sure to run your clean fingers along the surface of the fillet before you bread it; because butchers are often in a hurry, they can miss some of the smaller bones, which you must take care to remove. If you’re a big fish eater (or aspire to be one), you should invest in a pair of fish tweezers. They’re similar to the tweezers you find in your cosmetic bag, but they’re larger and a lot sturdier—they allow you to remove the bones with ease without tearing up the meat that surrounds them.
Once the fish is deboned, rinse it under water and then blot it dry with paper towels to remove excess moisture before breading it. If flattening is necessary, place it on a cutting board, cover it with a sheet of waxed paper, and gently pound it with the flat side of a meat mallet. Cut the fish to size according to the recipe specifications, and it’s ready to be breaded.
As for hints on finding the freshest fish possible, let me start by saying this is another good reason to befriend the people who work in your grocery store. They will gladly help you pick the freshest fish if you ask. My butchers (they double as fishmongers), Sheila and Roberto, often get me “the good stuff in the back.” Think about it—they display the fish that they need to sell before it goes bad. So if it doesn’t look as fresh as it could be, I ask if they have more in the back. You’d be surprised how willingly they dash to the refrigerators.
So the question is, how do you know what is fresh, right? Fish should always look moist and slightly shiny (never slimy). It should have no signs of discoloration and should definitely not have even the slightest hint of a yellowish or brownish hue. Look carefully at the edges—they should not look at all dried out. Another one of the most important things to know is that if fish is fresh, you should never be able to smell it. Sure, if you put it up to your nose, it will have a very mild aroma, but it should never smell “fishy.” Once you get it home, it’s best to eat fish within a day of buying it (unless it was frozen and you store it in your freezer, in which case it is best eaten within 3 months of purchase).
Shrimp
Whether you prefer to buy it cooked or raw, shrimp is always grouped into similar sizes and sold according to the number of shrimp that will be found per pound. For instance, 31-to 40-count shrimp means that there will be 31 to 40 shrimp per pound purchased. Higher counts will be smaller shrimp, and lower counts will be larger. Shrimp is often found in bulk at a fish counter, but if you’re the sort of shopper who likes to stock up, I recommend looking for prepacked bags in the freezer section because you can thaw as few or as many as needed. To thaw frozen shrimp, run them under cold (not hot or warm) water. They will thaw within a couple of minutes. Blot them dry with paper towels to remove any excess moisture.
Starting with precooked shrimp also works well in these recipes. Because precooked shrimp generally have a lot of extra water in them, they don’t tend to dry out. In fact, I almost always recook precooked shrimp, as I think they taste better.
The steps required to create perfectly faux-fried fish are similar to those for breading chicken, with one exception. It is not necessary to tenderize fish by letting the seasoned flour sit on it for a period of time.
Olive Oil Spray
Many of the recipes in this book suggest spraying food with extra virgin olive oil to achieve a rich flavor and crisp results with little additional fat. Use an olive oil sprayer filled with a full-flavored extra virgin olive oil that you love, not a store-bought aerosol sprayer that may contain propellants. Because it’s the first flavor that your tongue senses, the rich flavor will appear more concentrated than it is. If you don’t have an olive oil sprayer, however, skip the step.
I should probably mention that although I use extra virgin olive oil in the recipes in this book, fast food restaurants generally do not. I prefer using strongly flavored olive oil because a little goes a long way and because it contains mono-unsaturated fat. You’ve probably heard olive oil referred to as good fat because it’s been known to lower cholesterol.
To make sure fish is perfectly cooked to its moist and flavorful best, be sure to bake it just to the point that it flakes easily and is no longer translucent. If you bake it beyond that point, the fish will become dry and the breading soggy. In the case of shrimp, they are perfectly done when the shrimp have plumped and lost their translucence (often turning a rosy pink).