Saveur Our Favorite Tinned Fish and Seafood Cookbooks

From: Saveur - Saturday Jun 09, 2018 12:07 pm

Saveur

06/09/2018

Seafood Lessons from the Test Kitchen

For the past few months, the SAVEUR test kitchen has been testing out brand new seafood recipes for our new issue, Oceans and Islands. As we try things out, we often stumble upon new little obsessions that end up in the Test Kitchen section of our print magazine. Here are a few things we’re really, really into these days.

Leche de tigre is a critical part of Peruvian ceviche: The mix or citrus, chiles, aromatics, and fish stock flavors and gently “cooks” the raw fish. But in parts of Central and South America, it’s also often sipped as a hangover cure. Stay tuned for our Hair of the Tiger recipe, which will definitely hit the spot after your next late night.

If you’re looking to work with fish more in your own kitchen, we’ve got two suggestions. Debas, like the ones made by Korin, are heavy knives traditionally used in Japanese fish markets. Their width and heft are handy for beheading large fish, and the single-sided bevel provides a razor edge for separating fillets and removing skin without damaging the flesh. Western-style fillet knives have thin, narrow blades designed specifically for sweeping delicate fillets from a fish.

Tinned fish has kind of a bad rap these days, but we’re hoping to change that. We tried a lot (really, a lot) of tinned fish to come up with our 13 favorite tins ever. Don’t miss our favorite garlicky octopus and super smoky small scallops.

There’s a lot to know about preparing and cooking seafood, so we’ve put together a list of our favorite seafood cookbooks that range from service-oriented to, well, a little offbeat and weird. Some of them, like Sam Choy’s Poke, revolve around just one preparation, while James Beard’s New Fish Cookery takes a much, much more holistic approach. But, of course, we highly recommend that you check all of them out.