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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Wow. I'm from New York, and have never once in my life even seen a fish stick, much less eaten one, and I went to public schools my entire education until college.

The only reason I've ever even heard of them in the first place was that famous South Park episode about Kanye misinterpreting them as "fish dicks".

So this is fascinating to me... but who does eat them? Is it a geographical thing, or class thing?

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It's a class thing, and definitely a midwestern thing. I ate them as a child because they were dirt cheap and I could make them on my own. Often, I ate mine with a box of Kraft Mac & Cheez. The modern equivalent is probably frozen chicken nuggets.

You've probably seen them at restaurants. Something like the Fillet-o-Fish. Other fast food joints offer similar items during lint.

They aren't bad. As is typical with frozen, deep fried food, they really don't taste like anything. So I wouldn't really go out of your way to try one. The IQF fish fillets you can get in the grocery store are better in every respect.

I think you mean Lent, the 40-day (minus Sundays) season when traditional and mainline Christians give up a physical pleasure, like red meat or chocolate, as a sign of repentance and devotion. Not lint, the detritus that comes out of the clothes dryer, from the word linen.

New startup idea: the lintless dryer.

Yes, that's what I meant. I haven't been to church in decades, so I haven't seen Lent spelled out in a long time.

Just curious, do you speak English with an accent that has the words Lent and lint pronounced the same, or nearly the same? For example, do you pronounce "pen" and "pin" identically? The sounds are close, but in some accents the words are pronounced exactly the same.

Grew up in Ohio. I pronounce pen and pin the same way unless I am purposely trying to not, then I think I try to make pin a little more nasally but still pretty much sounds the same.

Lent and lint always sound the same.

> They aren't bad. As is typical with frozen, deep fried food, they really don't taste like anything. So I wouldn't really go out of your way to try one. The IQF fish fillets you can get in the grocery store are better in every respect.

If you have a food-processor and a herb-pantry, you can make your own fried fish with far superior tasting breading.

1. Bread selection: choose a bread that doesn't burn: fried oil is very high temperature. White-bread is fine, "Hawaiian rolls" are terrible. Various home-made breads are great.

2. Toast the bread, a few slices is all you need for a few slabs of fish.

3. Use a food-processor to break the bread into breadcrumbs.

4. Herbs: any combination that tastes good. I use Basil, Oregano, Rosemary, Salt and Pepper, take nibbles of the concoction until it tastes good.

5. Flour the fish with your right hand, drop it into egg+milk mix with your left hand, then drop the fish into breadcrumbs with your right hand. (Right hand dry, left hand wet)

6. 30-minutes in the refrigerator

7. Fry the fish, you're done!

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Its not as easy as fish-sticks though. Pull em out, put them on a baking sheet and cook. But the breading-process for good-tasting fried fish is easier than I expected.

Depends on the brand. Some of them are pretty neutral, like a cheap knockoff of fish and chips. Others are much more fishy tasting, which I would not describe as a good thing.

> that famous South Park episode about Kanye misinterpreting them as "fish dicks"

It was the other way around in that episode. Kanye was not understanding the joke, and people kept teasing him for it, until finally he decided to accept his destiny as he saw it from what everyone was saying and he moved into the sea to live with the fishes.

Anyway :p

> but who does eat them? Is it a geographical thing, or class thing?

Fish sticks are definitely popular here in Norway, and you can find them in pretty much every grocery store, in the frozen food department.

For frozen food and dry goods you can find even the unpopular ones are pretty much every grocery store.

> So this is fascinating to me... but who does eat them? Is it a geographical thing, or class thing?

I've eaten plenty of fish sticks growing up in Germany. No idea if it's a class thing, though. I don't see why rich people wouldn't eat fish sticks, but then again I'm not rich.

I still eat them sometimes as an adult :).

>I don't see why rich people wouldn't eat fish sticks

Because in the US fish sticks are normally deep frozen, low quality, bland tasting, mass produced, supermarket fair...

Think Hot Pockets but with fish (if we can call the bland fish remains and industrial byproducts inside those things "fish")...

It's weird how there's a stigma against frozen food when it's usually of much higher quality and retains much more nutrients and vitamins than any other form of conservation.

And unless you live near to the coast, fish always almost gets frozen. It just doesn't keep for more than a few days unfrozen, even at 0°C to 2°C.

Also, fish sticks are usually made from fish, not from "remains" or "byproducts". The fish are gutted and frozen into blocks right on the factory ships. They are cheap because much of their weight is breading, and the fish used for them are less popular.

They are a cheap, fast-to-prepare food which suits people on a tight budget and people with limited time, for example when both parents work. They appear a bit healthier than meat equivalents.

Rich people can buy fresh fish if they have time, or takeaway if they don't.

(Thinking when I last ate fish fingers has me realise what a difference my dad's change of job made, when I was about 12.)

Fancy seafood dishes often contain fishbones, the good thing about fish fingers is that they are relatively safe for children.

NYC lifer here. Never ate them either. Never saw them in public school either. I knew a few kids who did because they came from a "frozen foods family" who were into buying a lot of frozen foods in bulk because it was cheap and ket for a while. They also tended to like the other little frozen junk foods like bagel bites, hot pockets and pop tarts. My mother forbade that kind of stuff.

If we ate fish it was usually white fish fillet from the super market or fish market.

I loved them and still eat them occasionally even though I know they're bad for me. I was a latchkey kid and microwave meals were pretty easy for my mom to get me.

Microwaved bread crumb batter? Not even toaster-ovened?

Some kids like them. Parents get it because they want to have their kids eat some fish, because fish is healthy, and this is a kid-friendly form.

I think that's the pragmatic success of this food and not really related to marketing.

The healthiness of fish is cancelled by the batter to make it palatable.

Why fish sticks and not battered broccoli sticks or steak sticks or battered anything else sticks?

I've had them. My grandma would buy them sometimes when we were kids. I don't really like them. They're kinda like frozen processed chicken nuggets with a fishy flavour and a softer inside texture.

I grew up in Queens NY and fish sticks were a staple for school lunch

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