Nick Fisher
LATIN NAME
Atlantic salmon: Salmo salar. Pacific salmon: Oncorhynchus species
SEASONALITY
Wild Pacific salmon: avoid late summer–autumn when spawning but note that most on sale is previously frozen. Farmed: not applicable
MCS RATING
Wild Atlantic salmon 5; conventionally farmed Atlantic salmon 3; organically farmed Atlantic salmon 2; Pacific salmon 1–2
REC MINIMUM SIZE
Varies with species
MORE RECIPES
Cucumber, smoked mackerel and dill salad; Dab in a bag; Steamed sea bass with kale and ginger; Rice and fish with wasabi dressing
SOURCING
A once-noble creature, salmon has sadly lost its way. Historically known as ‘the king of fish’, it has been transformed into a flabby, farmed pink thing that slouches across every finger of sushi nigiri from here to Hirosaki.
The Atlantic salmon, which swims our rivers and seas, is an awesome example of aquatic evolution, of survival-against-all-odds. It’s an illustration of how nature can devise a strategy to allow a species under constant threat to not just continue to exist, but to transform itself from a tiny minnow into a hulking 20kg beast of a thing, jam-packed with millions of ripe eggs, ready to spawn a new generation.
Salmon is a version of trout, born in tiny, often inhospitable streams in places like the Highlands of Scotland, where to even last the winter is unlikely. Baby salmon know survival in a sterile river is not easy and take the gamble of leaving the rivers and heading out to sea. Apart from the risks of predation from birds, seals and every other fish, the young salmon also has to undergo a physiological transformation, enabling it to leave a freshwater environment and enter corrosive salt water – a change that would be fatal to almost all other freshwater fish (rather like you and me deciding to swap breathing oxygen for carbon monoxide). Then this tiny mite has to make its way to the rich feeding grounds near Greenland where it spends a couple of years gorging on the all-you-can-eat buffet of the sea.
Once large (anything over 3kg) and beginning to mature sexually, the salmon will run the gauntlet of nets, trawlers, seals, dolphins, pollution and poachers, to re-enter the very same river from which it first came. At this point it has to go through the salt-to-freshwater change, an equally demanding physical transformation in reverse, only to find itself faced with the job of running up a river, which may have been accessible to a wee fingerling fish moving downstream, but is not so easy for a huge silver thing going against the current, across weirs, through towns, over dams, while everything with teeth and a belly wants to eat it.
For a wild Atlantic salmon to survive the journey and actually manage to lay eggs and have them fertilised is miraculous. This is perhaps partly why our wild stocks are seriously depleted (though overfishing, pollution, migration barriers and environmental conditions are also in play) and why buying a wild Atlantic salmon to eat is just about impossible. Some Irish companies are allowed to smoke a portion of their healthier river-run fish. Otherwise, the sale of wild salmon is thankfully rigidly controlled.
And so, every piece of Atlantic salmon you buy, smoked or fresh, cooked or raw, is farmed – grown in net cages, fed on fishmeal pellets. There are a lot more farmed Atlantic salmon in the world than there are wild ones.
The farming of salmon has been mired in controversy because of a number of factors. These include pollution: there’s an awful lot of salmon shit falls out of a cage full of fish, and it can affect the biodiversity of the seabed below. Then there’s sea lice: these parasites occur naturally in the sea, finding fish to attach themselves to, and farmed salmon provide a dense collection of ready hosts. If lice numbers build up, it can cause malnutrition and death for both farmed and wild salmon and sea trout. One new solution to such threats is to put ‘cleaner fish’, who eat the lice, in the pens with the salmon. But many farmers also still rely on a range of chemicals to treat their stock, which can impact the sea-life underneath and around the net pens.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon have escaped over the years. Those that survive can interbreed with wild salmon causing genetic dilution as well as competing with them for food. And then, there’s the complicated issue of feed. Farmed fish are mostly fed on pellets containing fishmeal and fish oil from industrially caught wild fish. These may be species, like capelin and sand eels, which we don’t want to eat – but they are important in the diet of other wild species, including wild salmon.
Some of our cold-smoked salmon is world class, but the fish itself still comes from a farm. Some of the loins and cutlets of salmon in fishmongers’ displays are inviting – the marbling of fat through the flesh looks gorgeous and the price per kilo value is excellent. But it’s still a farmed fish. The truth is, salmon farming is a necessity if we want to continue eating salmon on the scale we do.
In fairness to the industry, organic salmon farmers make their feed from trimmings from fish processed for human consumption and/or from sustainable stocks and are intelligent and careful about what, if any, chemicals they introduce into the environment. However, personally, I still don’t want to eat a version of such an amazing fish that has been forced to live its life in a netted cage, fed on pellets.
But there is an alternative: wild Pacific salmon, which is widely available. There are five types: ‘Chinook’ (also known as king), ‘Sockeye’ (red), ‘Chum’ (dog or keta), ‘Coho’ (silver), and pink (humpback or spring). On first sight, their meat might look weird because it’s a much deeper red than the (often dye-enhanced) pink of Atlantic. But it’s fabulous oily, rich, muscly fish that you can eat with a clear conscience. In 2015 the run of Pacific salmon on the east coast of Canada was the largest ever recorded.
You could argue that to eat farmed is better than eating wild, because each fish you eat has been produced by man and therefore has not been removed from the natural wild world. And you might be right. After all, the meat we eat is from farmed animals. If it’s not a problem for you, then you can’t beat steamed Atlantic salmon loins with spring greens and mustard dressing, grilled salmon cutlets with capers and lime, or cold-smoked salmon pieces in lightly scrambled eggs on zingy rye bread toast.
However, if you do eat our farmed fish, I think you have to accept that the farming might not be doing our seas much good. The alternative is to eat wild, and admittedly imported, from a fishery that is very well controlled. I would buy wild Pacific salmon from an MSC-certified fishery every time.
FRIED SALMON WITH CUCUMBER AND GOOSEBERRY SALAD
This clean-tasting salad, with its sharp, fruity notes and delicate crunch, goes beautifully with rich, oily salmon. Outside the gooseberry season, you can make it just with cucumber – use a bit more of it and be generous with the lemon juice. You could also use tarragon instead of mint. This recipe works well with sea trout and with fresh mackerel too. Serves 2
2 salmon fillet portions (about 150g each)
1 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
A small knob of butter
FOR THE SALAD
½ small cucumber
100g ripe, raw, not-too-sharp gooseberries
Juice of ½ lemon
1 tsp caster sugar
1 tbsp chopped mint
1 tbsp extra virgin olive or rapeseed oil
Sea salt and black pepper
To prepare the salad, peel the cucumber, halve it lengthways and scoop out the seeds, then slice into 1cm thick half-moons and place in a bowl. Halve the gooseberries and add these to the cucumber. Add the lemon juice, sugar, mint, extra virgin oil and some salt and pepper. Stir everything together very gently then set aside while you cook the fish.
Heat a large non-stick frying pan over a medium-high heat. Season the salmon all over with salt and pepper. Add the oil to the pan along with the butter. When it’s bubbling away, lay the fish, skin side down, in the pan. Cook for 5–6 minutes, by which time the fish should have cooked at least three-quarters of the way through. Flip the fish over and give it a further minute, until just cooked through.
Transfer the fish to warmed plates. Give the salad a final turn and spoon it over and/or next to the fish. Serve straight away, with new potatoes.