Most sushi fish isn't fresh
medium.com
medium.com
And a lot of fish (kingfish and the rest of the seriola family for one example) are _better_ after a few days anyway, similar to resting beef.
I don't have a good word for this, so I will say that it removes the freezer taste.
My approach lately is to give away what I can't eat immediately.
Go Dawgs![1]http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/fish.html
I do wonder how much of this is just preventing condensation / freezer burn though. A moderate ice layer will probably be enough to stop auto-defrosting freezers from destroying food so quickly.
Ever go on vacation someplace famous for its seafood? Well, ask what seafood on the menu is from the region. You may be very surprised.
The trick to getting a truthful answer is to come across like you're just enthusiastic to have an authentic local dish. Then the manager or server is more likely to empathize and steer you towards what, if anything, is actually local. I've found that asking what is 'from the region' elicits better responses than asking what is 'local'.
I've also learned that when someone is admitting, by omission, that a lot of the fish and crustaceans on the menu are not local, they do not really want to explain where it's from. Usually its from all over the world and to know for sure they'd have to go look at a box in the alley.
It falls apart on the plate, but it's also one of the best-tasting types of fish dinner I've ever had.
Once it's an hour old it's too late, though, so I don't expect to ever see such fish commercially.
The first time we ordered it the shrimp weren't moving for several minutes, so we felt deflated and resigned to eating unexciting raw shrimp. Someone picked one up to eat it and let out a shriek when it jumped.
Most people have no idea how long most livestock has been dead before you get your cut of meat.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000V5076G/
Its a fascinating read, the author spent 2 years traveling around the world from fishing boats, to wholesalers, to sushi restaurants following the supply chain.
Given that most of the non-tuna species need to be frozen and the tuna supply chain consists almost entirely of frozen fish outside of some high end restaurants in big cities (and perhaps some fishing towns that make a up vanishingly small portion of sushi consumption) - where is all this fresh fish coming from?
On top of that, salmon and varieties of tuna seem to make up the large majority of fish used in sushi. Yes, other options exist, especially at high-end places, but go into your run-of-the-mill sushi joint pretty much anywhere and those two dominate (not counting the "fake crab" that seems to make up half of maki by weight these days - that's certainly frozen also). As above, tuna is generally frozen, and salmon largely has to be, so where is all this fresh fish at?
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/sushi-obsession-is...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-01/cobia-to-kick-start-mu...
A somewhat recent development in packing fish is automated cutting and vacuum packing - alive to wrapped in less than 30 (or so) seconds.
This is afaik also being done on factory ships, with fish like cod. Still rather new (a few years?) and expensive - but a great way to treat fish. Many of the advantages of flash freezing without the down sides.
For example, the high price of tusk and horn isn't saving the elephants and rhinos.
https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinc...
You mean compared to wild fish. Farm raised fish are still natural.
But in any case, even if there was a lot of antibiotic usage, the point still stands: There will not be a shortage of fish.
Why does the salmon feed need to be wild? Why can't it also be farmed?
Once prices go up, people will figure out how to farm tuna, and then they will no longer be scarce.
A single tuna can lay 6 million eggs. You don't need that many to supply the entire worlds demand for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon
This kind of short-sighted hubris is why we are on the cusp of ecological collapse.
/s
The nice thing about inefficiencies such as this one is that the cost is not externalized, thus companies have a large incentive towards reducing the problem.
I've eaten a ton of saba. He made great saba. But I can't eat it in most sushi restaurants because it isn't fresh. Now this article talks about the fish being fresh and that is one thing. Another is for something like saba which takes about 24 hours of preparation. Salting + marinating, there is differentiation in these. But when it's done, it's meant to be eaten. And if a restaurant doesn't get enough orders, it get put back in the fridge.
And that tastes like old stale fish. I suppose I should ask when they make it and come by that day.
BTW, my sushi chef closed his restaurant on University Ave and now caters mostly to startups. My ex-gf was also a chef and she told me that it's hard to make a living running a restaurant. It's much easier in catering since you know exactly how much to prepare on a day.
That being said I think plenty of places in SF offer high quality nigiri, and a few places in South bay are decent places for casual stops. None really entice me to frequent them.
They're also incredibly fast (45mph), agile, and one of the apex predators of the ocean. They are also warm-blooded.
This also means you can never eat 'fresh sushi'.
http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/alberta-man-gets-...
> Raw farm-fed salmon and saltwater fish such as tuna are
> generally safe to eat,
Found this part interesting. I worked for a short while in fisheries in the mid to late 90s, and graded fish for Sushi. There/then fish was iced, not frozen, as soon as captured to slow their metabolism, reduce any after-effects of stress, a cut is made so they also bleed, and die faster and as peacefully as possible. They are kept long enough to allow for rigor mortis (I guess what this article refers to aging), so when it ends it results in soft, melts-in-your-mouth meat. But no, not frozen, not for the "No. 1" destined for best clients. Lesser (cheaper) restaurants yes, frozen, older, lower quality fish.
This article refers to the US, and yes most of it is far, far away from the coast, and only way is to freeze it to distribute it such long distances. Unless flown in, obviously making the product much more expensive. So sure, as title says "Most sushi fish isn't fresh". In the same way, most sushi isn't the best sushi. And in many cases it doesn't really matter, if you want a quick and still yummy meal.
For tuna you can readily tell, even if you haven't trained your sense of smell, by the color. Most tuna here in the US you can see it a matte pink, instead of deep, alive, blood-like red, and you know right away it's been frozen.
Anyway, it seems to me the article gives the idea that freshness doesn't matter at all for sushi. I disagree.
I thought it was red because it's treated with carbon monoxide? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/dining/tunas-red-glare-it-...
Also, essentially all commercially sold tuna has been flash-frozen, because it's caught in the deep ocean. That famous tuna auction in Tsukiji? All frozen, every last one.
FWIW, I've had locally caught, non-frozen tuna a couple of times. It's good, but while the texture is different, it's just firmer, not necessarily better.
Otherwise it would know it's dead?
The excerpt from Wikipedia quoted in the article is actually more useful than the article text on this point.
The amount you age the fish is important.
I know it was rhetorical but I'd assume vegetarians, conservationists, anyone concerned with overfishing, people concerned with the destruction of the ocean ecosystems.
1) Anything is interesting if you look deep enough. What's frivolous to some is a hobby to another. Look at fanfic writers on the internet.
2) There are some things that we eat that have long term ramifications, rather than short term ramifications. Knowing what we put into our body helps us with the long term ramifications.
3) When it comes to sushi, it's pretty expensive, so you'll want to know what you're getting for the price. Learning more about it is one way to enjoy it as you're stuffing it into your face hole.
I don't think that's generally the case. As far as I know, the main salmon parasites that we care about are Anisakis (nematodes) and Diphyllobothrium (tapeworms). The former is much more common than the latter, especially in the US where as far as I know broad tapeworm has only recently been detected in a small fraction of Alaskan salmon.
Anisakis has no terrestrial hosts. Its lifecycle is crustacean -> fish -> aquatic mammal (whales, dolphins, seals) -> repeat.
Humans and other land mammals are the host of Diphyllobothrium, but, again, I don't think that's very common. From what I've read, most of the need to freeze salmon comes from wanting to deal with roundworms.
As with most things in life, it's really a question of risk and trade-offs. Parasites are rare enough in tuna that they are below the risk threshold for most people. Salmon less so, though it depends on where you get it and how much you trust them.
The broad guideline is that deep, open water, fast-moving fish have a lower parasite load than fish who live closer to shore, closer to the bottom, and/or don't move as fast.
Thus, tuna is pretty safe. But you're gonna want to cook an eel or a catfish before you stick it in your mouth.
One of the things I find fascinating about sushi but try not to think about too much, is that the clear implication is that all of the needed-to-be-frozen sushi I have eaten probably did have some parasites in it. I just ate dead parasites, which I admit is better than eating live ones. Safe, but still kind of gross.
There is no standard or regulation that designates fish as "sushi-grade." It's a popular misconception.
PS: turns out it is somewhat species dependent:
http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/docs/dph/environmental/foodsafety/...
I'd rephrase that as being able to spot fully grown parasites easily, but parasites don't always come fully mature.
[1] https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/30892/freezing-b...
It's certainly a unique experience.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/16/440951873/episo...
You rarely hear "that was a great burger, so fresh" because we don't have such a quality control problem with beef (as far as I know).
My friend was neighbors with a fisherman in Cape Cod. Now THAT was fresh fish.