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What is the Best Tasting Fish?


Stephen Bosse

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Tonight and tommorrow night it will be fresh Alaskan Halibut. The season has been off to a great start and the fish are white, pure and fresh---and delicious. Tonight simply seared and roasted. Tommorrow night deep-fried and served with chips.

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Tonight was also pacific halibut carved in front of our eyes from the intact fish (okay so I am in landlocked Calgary Canada)<br />Crusted with lemon zest , salt, fresh ground pepper,fleur de sel and a hint of garlic then seared for 2 min in oil flipped and 7 min in 425 oven.<br />With first fresh local asparagus and smashed potatoes <br />Succulent moist. SPRING!!<br />

Llyn Strelau

Calgary, Alberta

Canada

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David Ross, on 10 May 2013 - 18:06, said:

Tonight and tommorrow night it will be fresh Alaskan Halibut. The season has been off to a great start and the fish are white, pure and fresh---and delicious. Tonight simply seared and roasted. Tommorrow night deep-fried and served with chips.

I agree with others that it just depends on the fish and freshness. I tend to prefer oilier fish simply prepared. However I was gifted with some pristine Alaskan halibut last week - caught, cleaned vac sealed swiftly. It smelled sweet and of the sea right out of the defrosted packet and tasted just as clean and pure. Getting more next week from the fisherman :)
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I love the flavor of trout but it has to be very fresh. A while back a friend gave me some sturgeon that had been caught in the California aqueduct and it was excellent. Having grown up in the south, I also love catfish but again, it has to be very fresh. I have a friend who owns a trout farm near Bishop and he occasionally brings me lovely fresh-caught trout - sometimes rainbow, sometimes brown ...

I can't have fish from the ocean now because I am sensitive to iodine but when I could still have it, my favorite was Grouper and I used to fish for it but, sadly, these were decimated due to overfishing and it is now hard to find.

When I still lived in the San Fernando valley we had an excellent seafood market on Roscoe Blvd. in Canoga Park that carried fresh-caught fish.

The owner would be down at San Pedro at 3 a.m. waiting for the boats to come in and his sons were often still unloading tubs full of fish and etc., when the store opened at 9.

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"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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The best tasting fish is the one I'm eating. I'll admit a fondness for some rather odd fish, as well - particularly Carachama, which most people know as Plecostomus and keep as pets. They're very nice steamed in canna leaves with a bit of garlic and palm hearts.....

Hahaha!! Someone I knew would faint at the very notion. Cook and eat a blue-eyed pleco? Like the one she kept and which she swore winked at you and followed your movements around? Heh.

Although I presume you mean the related ones, not the blue-eyed pleco. :-)

I haven't eaten blue-eye, but that's more a question of it not being a native fish in the rivers I frequent. These ones, however, are often on the table when I go fishing in the Río Puyo or the Río Cosanga.... Until I looked at your link, it had never occurred to me to try frying them - I fish them with cast nets and generally get smaller catch that what's shown there (probably because I'm not in deeper water).

Elizabeth Campbell, baking 10,000 feet up at 1° South latitude.

My eG Food Blog (2011)My eG Foodblog (2012)

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Freshly caught speckled trout, aka weakfish, aka spotted seatrout, a saltwater species not related to brook trout. Grilled and in tacos like this: http://bouillie.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/img_0435.jpg

Or in trout meunière like this: http://bouillie.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/pb221728.jpg

ETA or pretty much any ol way, the fresher the better.

I'm also a big fan of mangrove snapper and cobra, aka ling or lemon fish.

Edited by HungryC (log)
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Although I earlier chimed in emphasizing whatever's fresh, gotta say that when very fresh I prefer oily fish: mackerel, bluefish, etc. but it's got to be fresh, especially bluefish which deteriorates faster than any other fish I know. Best fish I've had in recent years was some tinker mackerel I caught in Maine just three hours before cooking. Mighty fine eating!

Bob Libkind aka "rlibkind"

Robert's Market Report

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Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away the best tasting fish was Chilean sea bass. Once upon a time the best tasting fish was bluefin tuna. Two weeks ago the best tasting fish was skate, especially because it was the first time I ever cooked it. And yesterday, in the chilly drizzly mountains of NC at a very modest roadside restaurant with outdoor tables on a stream the best tasting fish was a thick fresh slab of lightly breaded catfish that was served piping hot on a puddle of grits.

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I just returned from vacation where I had the good fortune of having access for two weeks to a good variety of fresh fish and I took advantage of the opportunity. The best I had and as good, I think, as anything I've ever enjoyed was red mullet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Today my vote for best tasting fish goes to the 2013 Copper River Salmon. The first fish hit our markets last week and as is always the case, the marketing machines drove the price upwards of $35/lb. for the first catch. I waited until this morning and as luck would have it, my fishmonger gave me the good news that the price dropped $15/lb. overnight.

Right now I've got the salmon curing for "Salmon Candy." The recipe can be found here http://forums.egullet.org/topic/142515-cook-off-59-cured-brined-smoked-and-salted-fish/page-2 at our Cured, Brined, Smoked and Salted Fish Cook-Off.

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Big silver eels hot out the smoker in the best tasting fish I've ever eaten. The oiliness and richness of the flavour is just on a different level to anything else.

Conversely, I'm partial to steamed turbot. The thick gelatinous skin around the side fins and the pearly clean tasting flesh are a textural wonderland to Cantonese fish lovers.

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My vote is now going out to the boat-fresh yellowfin tuna steaks that my local favourite fishmonger has had the last week or two. However, he assures me that when the dorado (mahi mahi) starts running, that will be even better....

Elizabeth Campbell, baking 10,000 feet up at 1° South latitude.

My eG Food Blog (2011)My eG Foodblog (2012)

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Catfish.

I've eaten trout that I caught myself and cooked within the half hour in Wyoming.

I've eaten freshly caught and planked salmon when sailing and camping the Canadian Gulf Islands many years ago.

I've eaten almost every kind of fish in the best restaurants.

Catfish.

Now, waiting for the cries of outrage! LOL But that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

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Catfish...too many years ago to mention, Dad would wake me about 3 am to go with him to "run the trotline" (I was an "only" so I learned a lot of things I probably wouldn't have in those days if I'd had a brother).

We'd come home with the catch, mostly catfish, and clean & fry 'em up for breakfast with eggs, grits or potatoes, etc.

Today, the farm raised catfish are still really good, but I'd have to say Striped Bass, Chilean Sea Bass, Halibut are pretty darned good. Oh, and Skate Wing!

ETA: Grouper Cheeks!

Edited by furzzy (log)
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