"fresh" salmon question


 
S

Scott Hoofman

TVWBB Super Fan
I am so clueless when it comes to fish. I have a little christmas breakfast to go to this weekend and thought that a piece of smoked salmon would be nice to take (along with some fresh bagels and cream cheese). I stopped by my local meijer superstore and surprise, surprise, they have fresh atlantic salmon. I looked all over the pkg. and couldn't find anything about it being farm raised. But, and here's my problem and question, the fillet had that slightly pink look to it like farm raised salmon. Is North Atlantic salmon that different from PNW salmon? The PNW salmon I was picking up from Costco this summer and early fall had this great ruby coloring and I thought that the NA would be the same. Or, am I just getting scammed?
 
The 'Wild Caught' Atlantic Salmon that I have purchased was very dark in color. Flavor was WAY more intense than farm raised.
 
fyi - I've never seen non-farmed salmon at Costco. However, could be a function of my location.

Color, alone, shouldn't be there determining factor on whether you buy it. A lot of the farm raised salmon is artificially colored to enhance the "ruby" color. (e.g., Costcos near me carries farm-raised, color-enhanced salmon.). Likewise, not all wild salmon is a dark red either. I can't speak to the differences of atlantic and PNW, unfortunately.

Real wild salmon is wonderful. There is a different flavor to farm-raised. That said, there is some wonderful farm-raised salmon out there and it will do great on the smoker. So, if you don't have access to good wild, feel confident that good, fresh farm-raised will yield a wonderful product too... Long and short... whatever you see there in the store will probably do great things for you!

Good luck.
 
There is a lot of difference between wild salmon from the Pacific and Atlantic farmed raised. We have both products out here in the Seattle area and it is easy to spot the differences.
It sounds as if you may have farmed raised, even when it is colored (most is) the color is nothing like fresh wild caught salmon.

Jim
 
I'm getting the distinct feeling that even though it didn't say "farm raised" on the pkg. that, in fact, is what I have. Bummer.

ps. Adam, our costco only carried it for 2 or 3 months. Their back to the farm-raised stuff now.
 
Scott
Costco can only get fresh wild salmon during the major runs, those are not year around.

One thing to understand about farm raised salmon because of the need to protect the pens from current you have a problem with polution levels on these fish. It's is recommended you only eat farm raised salmon once a month.

Wild salmon's color and flavor are a function of the migration they must make to their spawning areas. The Copper River run as an example is a long hard trip and the fish must be ready to make that trip. That development is the reason these fish have the color and flavor they are famous for. There are many other wild runs that produce great fish also but raising fish in a pen can not produce this quality.

Jim
 
One thing to understand about farm raised salmon because of the need to protect the pens from current you have a problem with polution levels on these fish. It's is recommended you only eat farm raised salmon once a month
Click to expand...

Oh great. Thanks for the info Jim. But, I don't think i'll tell the wife that one, she'd probably swear off fish altogether.
 
There is a tremendous difference between wild and farm-raised salmon. There is also a difference in the varieties of farm-raised salmon. My favorite is the farm-raised Scottish salmon. I find it very consistent in quality and flavor and far superior to the other farmed products - but that's just my personal optinion.
 
There is a significant difference between farmed and fresh... color, taste and of course the aspect of simply going in a boat to go get it! However, here's a website that describes the differences - note that there are a variety of salmon and each has a different link with pictures:

http://www.bcseafoodonline.com/files/seafood-factsheet.html

Looking into salmon at this time of day simply makes me wanna plank some on the grill!

Cheers,

Brian
http://www.houseofq.com
 
Well, I went ahead and smoked it anyway. Came out pretty tasty. Should be a hit tomorrow. I think that I'm going to chase down the butcher at Meijers (not an easy thing to do) and confront him on whether or not it was "fresh" or "farm-raised".

thanks for all the comments. All were very helpful.
 
Friends in Alaska don't always send friends fresh fish!
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