How to
Keep Your Recently Caught Fish at Premium Fresh Quality
Most folks love to go fishing
at some time in their life, and whether it’s your passion or just an
occasional pastime, you really should know how to treat your catch
with respect so it will reward you later with some lovely dining
tastes. So how do we go about achieving this?
The place to start is in killing your fish humanely. Too many times
people will throw their catch into a bucket of water or tub of some
sorts until the fish slowly but surely drowns.
This is common practice in so many places, but apart from being
inhumane, this will leave your fish in a stressed state which causes
stiffness and makes the flesh deteriorate much quicker. In simple
terms, by the time you are dining, the quality of the flesh won’t be
all that it could be.
How
do we lengthen the shelf life of our recently caught fish?
If you go to any decent fishmonger you’ll notice that their fish
stocks are flexible and have a certain limpness to them. This is
because their boat people have treated the fish correctly at the
point of capture.
You can do this too. You need to brain spike the fish which can
sound disturbing to begin with, but it is much more humane and
beneficial in the long run. Hold the fish whilst taking a sharp
implement and pushing it quickly through the fishes head to pierce
its brain.
It can take practice, but the signs that you’ve done it correctly
will be shown by the fish flaring its gills and flapping its tail
one or two times before it rests for good. Scientists tell us that
certain enzymes are produced when fish are killed quickly like this
which delays rigor mortis kicking in and this is what lengthens the
shelf life.
Now storing the recently deceased fish in a bucket of its natural
water might seem like the logical thing to do, but this is the worst
thing you can do. The fish need to be immediately stored on ice or
in an ice slurry of sorts.
An ice slurry is simply achieved by placing a bag of ice into a
cooler mixed with some saltwater. This creates a brine and will
store your fish at 0°C (32°F) bringing the core temperature of the
fish down very quickly.
We are essentially slowing down the bacteria growth rate and hence
making our fish shelf life much longer.
Fish can be stored on ice now for up to 8 high quality days whilst
we don’t break the ice cycle we have started.
