u/DreweyD

New packaging from Ferrigno of their La Bonne Mer brand salmon, updating, best I can tell, what used to be labeled “Saumon Sauvage”—wild salmon—in the recent past. This is wild-caught salmon, from the “Northeast Pacific,” so it’s semi-hilarious to me that this is the one tinned fish not loudly trumpeting “Wild Caught” on the tin.

Wild caught is good. Extra virgin olive oil is good. Ferrigno is good. What’s less good, from my perspective, is that this is chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta), also sometimes referred to as keta or dog salmon. It’s not me favorite, alas. Chum is leaner than most other salmon, and, perhaps accordingly, its flesh tends to be a bit grainy and less moist than you might expect when the big print shouts Salmon. I’m happy to report that as canned keta goes, this is relatively tender and pleasant. Relatively; I’ve had way worse—indeed, the sister can from Ferrigno packed in just water is pretty darn uninspiring. The flavor here is super-mild. Some folks might count that a solid win. For me, though, a bit boring, so I punched it up with Sijang Garlic Chili Crunch, my most favorite flavor party-animal.

I picked this up at World Market. I went to their site just now, to check the asking price, but they claim not to sell it. So, I shot an email to the head office, and while they replied with very admirable speed, that individual also stated it’s not a tin they stock. I would have concluded I must’ve been taking crazy pills, but this isn’t the first time I’ve bumped into such facts-on-the-ground—facts-on-the-shelf??—at World Market. It’s a very peculiar enterprise, but God love ‘em for featuring fish. You may, then, either see or not see this salmon in your local outlet.

I determined that today was the day I’d give this tuna energy stick from Japan another go. I wasn’t exactly thrilled by it in my first outing earlier this year, but I’d given meself a pep talk, suggesting I think of it as just a sea-based hotdog.

That reframing did actually help a bit. Full disclosure: I don’t really care much for even normal hotdogs, so adjusting my expectations only aided me so much. Looks semi-convincingly like a hot dog. Texture, though, is another matter. This tuna sausage is super solid. I expect you’ve never had any sausage of any kind as firm as this baby.

The product is pitched at health conscious folks looking for protein bombs, and that’s what is delivered. Not much flavor, not fishy, not anything really. It gives you the grams of protein quickly and efficiently. Boom! Then you’re back to your vigorous pursuits, fueled and ready.

I ordered these through Food Come Come, which is a reseller/through-seller of Japanese stuff like this. I’ve sourced a bunch of tinned fish and related things from them, and they’ve been good to work with. These bars, though, won’t be on my repeat-buy list.

Our World Market here in Richmond has had the Miss Can varities wrung out of it for a long while now. No fear—Tuckahoe Seafood, the World’s Finest Fishmonger™️, has added Miss Can to their already extensive selection. If you’re whizzing up and down I-95 through My Fair City, the tiny shop is about 10 minutes west. I submit it’s a pilgrimage well worth your time.

My favorite of Ms. Can’s tins is this mackerel with curry and chili peppers. I remember several years ago when i first cracked one of these open, my reaction was: “Where’s the curry sauce?” Because it’s not in there. Instead what Miss Can serves up is curry-infused olive oil. Many cans later, I’ve come all the way around, and I’m a big fan of the curry flavor here, which strikes me as suiting mackerel particularly well. The flavors are rich and dark and complex. This morning, I had these fillets on a breakfast burrito with zucchini, onions, and tomatoes. If I do it again, I’ll cancel the shredded cheese, whose services weren’t actually required, turns out.

Side Note: That’s not really Tuckahoe Seafood’s trademarked slogan—I just call them that.

Side-Side Note: Our A/C is on the fritz, and the house didn’t dip below 80 last night. The heat of the day is already beginning to build, and as I sit schvitzing at my makeshift home office, waiting for the technician to arrive, I can already catch the curry-n-mackerel aroma pouring out my pores. My lovely bride is gonna be unamused if we don’t get cool air flowing here pronto.

Black rockfish—I’m plonking down my chip on the table and wagering that the specific species in these cans in Sebastes melanops—is a mild, white, relatively lean fish, which plays in the kitchen like cod, snapper or halibut. On its own fresh rockfish has a delicate flavor with a subtle hazelnut background note I find very pleasing. (There are, by the way, dozens of species called “rockfish” just in Alaskan waters, so I could easily be wrong in me bet—there might even be different rockfish in different batches from Wildfish.)

Here the fish’s nuttiness is overshadowed by garlic, sumac, and plenty of black pepper. Not a damn thing wrong with that. The marinade is delicious, in my opinion. It stands up for itself in preparations with other strong flavors. I’d baked a malted sourdough farm bread that was extra snappy, I’d cut very pungent fresh scallions into cream cheese, and we had the last of the peak-of-season Hanover tomatoes beloved here in central Virginia, so I reached for this standout rockfish.

Wildfish is known for its smoked fish, so it’s worth pointing out that this rockfish hasn’t spent time in the smokehouse. It looks dark, but that’s really the sumac and black pepper doing that work. I’ll also highlight the cannery’s statement at their site that “[w]e overhauled the recipe from the previous version. And trust us, it's better.” I’ve had maybe a dozen and a half of these cans, spread over quite a few years, and I’ve always enjoyed them and noted a solid consistency in the product. I’m not entirely sure what they fixed, but if you didn’t care for the experience in a past outing, you might be more pleased nowadays.

Long hot day of yardwork and Pappa needed a snicky snack. And because I’m a fancy boy and treat meself nice, I opened this mighty fine can of extra-baby sardinillas from Galicia, Spain.

These really are some of the very best little pilchards I know of. They’re young, but fatty, and still firm little bites. I hit them with just a splash of Kanzuri yuzu hot sauce, which packs a one-two punch of heat and citrus. I think it’s ideal with sardines like these.

It was not love at first bite between me and this herring when we first met years ago. Promise me horseradish, and you better deliver a pungent punch. The sauce here, though, is really quite mild-mannered. So the tin and I shook hands and parted ways.

But there’s the can, eyeing me from store shelves, giving me that come-hither-and-pop-the-top look. I’m weak, my memory ain’t what it once was, so I bought a multi-pack last month. Four tins in, what have I learned.

Well, Rügen Fisch are supremely consistent, for starters. Every single can is indistinguishable from the others. Admirable steadiness. This sauce is still very bland, but I’ve now decided that’s a feature not a flow, because this herring is capable of being whatever you make of it. It works just great with all sorts of other flavors and in all sorts of settings. Last week I had it: (A) atop a Close Encounters mound of leftover mashed potatoes with canned cranberry sauce and (2) on toasted slices of challah with thin-shaved strips of melon. Both mighty nice. Here, this morning, the fish and sauce were turned out on a bed of very garlicky hummus with Kalamata olives and Sijang Garlic Chili Crunch, and it was a great combo. Get yourself some tins and go nuts.

Many, many comments here in the subreddit focus intently on the amount of salt in given cans of seafood.  The vast majority of commenters are from the United States, but the tins commented on are overwhelmingly produced in the European Union (EU).  I suspect that a lot of folks haven’t cottoned onto the tricky reality that while daily recommended salt intakes in the EU and the States are quite similar, they are measured using quite dissimilar approaches.

The EU focuses on table salt (NaCL or sodium chloride) recommendations, while the US concentrates instead on sodium limits.  Chemically, 2.5 grams of salt contains just 1 gram of sodium—the rest is the chlorine atoms.

Here’s how the governmental recommendations break out:  In the EU the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) states that 5.0 grams of salt per day is safe and adequate for adults. This is equivalent to 2.0 grams of sodium (about 1 teaspoon).  Meanwhile, over in the States, the US Food & Drug Administration recommends limiting daily intake to 2.3 grams of sodium. That’s equivalent to 5.75 grams of salt.  (For what it’s worth, the American Heart Association favors an ideal limit of 1.5 grams of sodium/3.75 grams of salt for most adults, especially those with high blood pressure.)

So, while the suggested levels are fairly close, how we consumers actually see this information differs sharply and perhaps too subtly.  As discussed, EU regulations mandate that food packaging lists "Salt" in the nutrition facts; US regulations require packaging to list "Sodium" in milligrams (mg) and provide a % Daily Value (%DV).

Sorry, there’s a bit more math in this Chemistry class today.  The standard conversion calculation is: Salt = (Sodium × 2.5).  Why 2.5?  Chemically, sodium makes up about 39.3% of the mass of each sodium chloride molecule.  So, if food contains 1 gram of sodium, the amount of sodium chloride that would contain that much sodium is 1 ÷ 0.393 = 2.54 grams.  Anyway, the labeling regulations round that to 2.5.  Easy peasy, right?

Thus, if you see a can of Portuguese sardines listing  “Sal: 1.5 g,” you should think of that as approximately 600 mg sodium, rather than rather than 1,500 mg sodium.  This is the part most Americans miss.  We tend to overestimate the amount of sodium when we see the grams of salt.  We should be dividing by 2.5 when we read EU nutrition facts.

And it actually gets slightly worse—sorry.  With sardines and other preserved seafood, the EU number labeled “salt” isn’t necessarily a laboratory measurement of sodium chloride that was physically added to the can.  Under EU rules, the declared salt content is generally calculated from the total sodium content using the 2.5 conversion, including sodium originating from sources other than added table salt.  So if a sardine can says “Sal: 1.2 g/100 g” that corresponds to roughly “480 mg sodium/100 g.”  This does not mean that the producer poured 1.2 grams of sodium chloride into each 100 grams of sardines; the salt that the fish arrives with fresh from the ocean and/or from a brining process at the cannery can be included in the tally, with different outfits making their own choices in this regard.  In general, though, this means that American consumers are slightly overestimating the saltiness of EU tins, since similar products canned in the US or much of the rest of the world don’t reflect such “naturally occurring” salt on the label, just the salt sprinkled into the can.

Do I love tinned fish? Yup. Do I enjoy sardines? Indeed, and frequently? Do I favor spiced options. Oh yeah. And do I love surprises? Well . . .

Eating canned fish from many corners of the world, from many producers, and in many varieties teaches you things about yourself. I know that I love novelty—I doggedly pursue new and different things. But I also value consistency. And I don’t care much for surprises.

Over the past year, I’ve been increasingly—too often!—met with unwelcome surprises in cans of sardines. So damn many scales—not the occasional one or two, but full suits of armor left intact at the canneries. I’ve been met, as well, with wild swings in texture, with mushy fish delivered by producers who’d never previously delivered poorly-processed pilchards.

I said I valued consistency, and I mean that in both senses. I want a given can from a given brand to provide a consistent experience, time after time, within a narrow range of variability. And the consistency of the fish ought to be correct, not smushy, not rock tough, just right, please.

It occurred to me at the seashore last week that I’ve already got stacks of cans in me larder that never let me down, that get consistency right in all ways, all the time. Garfish and white anchovies are constants, reliably the same delicious experience every time I peel back the lid. My favorites are highlighted here: The Ati Manel spicy garfish and the Patagonia spicy white anchovies. Clean taste—each fish has its own distinctive flavor—nice firm flesh, never a scale in sight.

These slender fish are both, by nature, less fatty than sardines. And I do love me the oily richness of a properly-prepared pilchard. But “properly” carries a lot of weight in that sentence. Not enough proper processing is happening in the sardine world. With garfish and white anchovies, from Ati Manel, Patagonia, Mariscadora, Olasagasti, Ramón Peña, and many other producers, though, I’m almost never disappointed.

I rashly tucked into 3 tins of Pacific sardines from La Sirena yesterday—nearly a pound of fish, which is triple what I’d do on an average day. And then I had to break into both the garfish and the white anchovies today, because I had a bee in me bonnet about them and was hellbent to side-by-side them. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps I wouldn’t even finish them. Nope, these little dudes were delicious. Neither is spicy hot, at least not for an American palate—they just have a bit of extra flavor excitement going on. I had them on a bed of slow-cooked grits zipped up with hatch and habanero chilis— not a single fish went to waste (although some fish may have gone to waist over these past couple days).

I spied a new-to-me option from La Sirena, with the sky blue-labeled “Pico Poco Mild Spicy Tomato Sauce” standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their plain Tomato Sauce and their Pica Pica Spicy Tomato Sauce. Pico Poco—a little bit piquant—that’s funny stuff, La Sirena marketing department!

I generally prefer La Sirena’s offerings produced in Ecuador, with larger sardines in large oval flat cans, but I have had these canned-in-Thailand versions plenty of times over the years. These small soup can-style varieties are each 5.5 ounces/155 grams, which nets you four mid-size Pacific sardines, as opposed to the typical sardine tin with 3 fish in a 110 to 120 gram can. The form factor looks small, but it’s really 25% more.

The ingredients and nutrition facts are essentially identical, except that the Pico Poco and Pica Pica versions have chili powder in the mix. Even the plain has a nice sauce, an actual marinara rather than the thin, bland tomato gruel many “tomato sauce” sardines arrive in. The Pica Pica variety is one I frequently reach for; it actually delivers a bit of a spicy bite, the best of the Asian sardine sauces in my experience.

How does the Mild Spicy fit in? Well, it truly is spicy, but only mildly. That middle option might suit dear Goldilocks, and it might well please you, too, but I’ll stick with the full-spice version. Even that’s no heat-bomb, but it’s got a richer, deeper flavor I favor.

That said, all three deliver nicely-prepared sardines, not too firm, not too soft, and at a $1.49 a can, they all represent very good value. You can’t really go wrong with La Sirena’s products.

I love me a snack-size package, and French producer Les Dieux offers these perfectly-prepared small pilchards in this wee 46 gram tin. That’s roughly half the net weight of most sardine cans; it the small size that you more often see filled with salt-cured anchovies. Three middleweight fish, which for me is an ideal quick nosh. I bought these in France last year, almost as afterthoughts as I amassed a trove of hard-to-source-back-in-the-States cans, but now I wish I’d grabbed a dozen.

Our family gathers in our dozens at the beach this coming week, and many are quite enthusiastic about tinned treasures. Pleases me especially to see the youths tucking in and trying new things. Gets harder every year to surprise them, but I do love me a challenge.

These pilchard sardines from Spain were a gift from strangers yesterday morning. There’s no word I love more than “free,” and yet does freedom come at a cost?

I’m not a fellow who much cares for sardines in tomato sauce. And in this particular presentation, it’s not even really tomato sauce in the marinara sense; more like a salsa tumaca or the crushed/grated tomatoes with just olive oil, a bit of garlic, and salt that goes with pane con tomate—fresh, not simmered all Sunday.

So it might be just that sweet, savory flavor of FREE talking, but these were absolutely great. The salsa was fresh tasting, the plump pilchards perfectly prepared, meaty but juicy-tender. Full points, Mariscadora, no demerits or deductions.

Would they have tasted so good if I’d paid $5.50 for them? (That’s the list price at Rainbow Tomatoes Garden, but out-of-stock at the moment.) I couldn’t tell you. I mean, I know from lots of experience that Mariscadora does consistently fine work. Yet tucking into a gift like this might change the calculus.

With very limited exceptions—maybe 2 or 3 a year—of gifts received from family, friends, or, with this particular can, kindly fellow travelers, I don’t share thoughts here about tinned fish unless I’ve paid for it meself. In our sadly imperfect world, these tins cost money, sometimes a good bit of money, and that matters.

You deserve the straightest shooting possible as you make your own dollars-n-euros decisions. I submit that if you’re seeing reviews here, on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or wherever else the youths are posting, from anyone who has received the cans from producers or marketing companies, you absolutely ought to take what all gets said with bowling ball-sized grains of salt. At the very least, vote with your views, likes, subscribes, and comments if the authors don’t make crystal clear, each and every time, whether they’re focusing on a product that cost them nothing.

I’ve had SloJabroni’s sticker on me truck for quite some time now, and while it’s sparked some nice conversations as I’ve trolled around town, this morning was the first time I landed a tin. At a red light, a lady jumped out of a truck behind me and ran up to my passenger window. “My husband asked me to give this to you,” she said, pointing back to their truck, which her husband was piloting. He give me a thumbs up, and off we drove. Mariscadora Sardines in Tomatoes, so whoever these good citizens are, they know their tins, God bless ‘em.

Lots of folks seem to recoil at the prospect of fish and cheese, but it can be a great partnership. Here the fine French pilchard sardines are joined in the tin by a tomato sauce enriched with brousse, a soft (in this case) cow’s milk cheese that adds both creamy and tangy notes. And then Ferrigno ups the ante by sprinkling in some mint.

Dan over at Rainbow Tomatoes Garden—where you can buy this can if you’re in the States—offers these observations on the cheese: “Never heard of a whey cheese? Think of ricotta and you won’t be too far off. So this is a tin of sardines in a cheesy tomato sauce with herbs (including mint!).” That’s about dead on, although I do think brousse packs a bit of a zing and slight funk where ricotta is mighty mild.

Did I get anything minty on the nose or palate? Nope. But that’s fine—it’s a good herby, rich sauce. What I did get, though, was roe in each of the three fish. Can’t remember how long it’s been since I hit the 3 fer 3 lotto on roe. Me lucky day!

I’ve really been enjoying the various offerings from Japanese producer Bokksu, including this mackerel (Scomber australasicus). They pack it in olive oil, and package it with English-language labeling, so I suppose it’s designed for export. Which is fine by me—I’m a fish-loving gaijin.

The oil isn’t the only standout feature of this mackerel, which arrives in the small pieces you see here atop black beans and fire-roasted tomatoes. More commonly we open cans from Japan and see large transverse slices of the fish. No giant difference, but I’m finding the Bokksu approach pleasant and meal-friendly. I’ve had quite a lot of Japanese mackerel, and this is me favorite—nice tender fish that’s not hiding behind the more customary sweet-soy sauce.

Bokksu’s products are fairly widely available online, in certain real-world stores, and from Bokksu itself directly. Anywhere you find them, though, they’re not cheap, with this mackerel running around $13 a tin. And it’s a petite tin, too—3 ounces/85 grams. But it’s quite good, fairly unusual, and it’s made it all the way from Japan.

Throwing caution to the wind, I tucked into a bowl of fresh lettuce like there’s no tomorrow!

All of the tuna varieties from Portuguese label Naval have been swell. This lemon-n-chili pepper edition is not terribly citrusy and not at all spicy, but the overall impact is bright and fresh, which suits me just swell.

The tuna here was, I believe, skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis), although the labeling leaves wiggle room for cans to contain albacore as well. Whichever, the beefy little steaks were tender and flaked apart the pleasingly.

I bought this can as part of a large order from Portugal Vineyards in Porto, Portugal. They ship to the States, and although the shipping ain’t nothing, the prices are attractive. This can was under $7 delivered to me front porch, whereas, for example, Lata here in the U.S. has these for $11.99, plus whatever sales tax and shipping will cipher out to, and they’re often out of stock with all domestic retailers.

These Baltic brisling sprats (Sprattus sprattus) are Goldilocks-smoked: Smokier than King Oscar but way less than Riga Gold. So they’re golden and aromatic, and firm without being stiff. There are tails, but they’re not at all dry paintbrush-y.

The vegetable oil (canola) is nothing to write home about. I suspect these’d be the only sprats I’d buy if these were in olive oil. Some people say olive oil and smoke don’t mix, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is wrong. There are nicely wood-smoked fish in good olive oil that I think are ideal. The José Gourmet smoked small sardines are one example I’ll offer up.

I see this can appearing in more stores near I frequent in Richmond, Virginia and Brooklyn, NY, shelved almost exclusively with the kosher goods, rather than on the main tinned seafood shelves. That worked out especially well for me yesterday at Wegmans where these ($3.49/tin) sat just above a box of Moonstrips, Streit’s Matzos definitely-not-for-Passover onion-n-poppy seed matzot, which I rarely see in stores. Matzoh: It’s the cracker that can also be your plate!

If I’ve ever had Turkish canned sardines before, I’ve forgotten. I spotted these at the Foods of All Nations grocery store in Charlottesville, Virginia the other week. They generally carry good stuff, so I grabbed the box. Hopes were elevated!

Meh. These are fairly plain-jane Mediterranean pilchard sardines. They’ve been subjected to quite rough handling, with much of their silvery skin swiped off. At least that took most—but not all!—the scales. There were tails on some, none on others. I’m always pleased to see extra virgin oil on the ingredient list, but here it’s an unremarkable one that doesn’t contribute much. I think I paid around $4.00 for these, and I’d’ve felt better, given some of the shortcomings, at around $2.75-ish.

I’m a bit of a fanatic about extracting the sardines intact from the tin. Not possible here; all but two of the poor devils arrived pre-broken.

The cooking seemed to have gone better than the handling. These had the typical sardinilla texture—not too tough, not too mush—and a right-down-the-middle sardine flavor. When I cracked the tin and drained off a bit of oil, I caught a perhaps slightly too-fishy aroma, but that didn’t prove to be the overall impact once I got them out on the plate.

I built a breakfast sandwich that I failed to capture on camera. Pumpernickel-rye bread, jalapeño-lime humus, and the pieces and parts of these fish. Needed a bit of extra pizzazz, and the Original Zhoug hot sauce from Shuug did the pizzazzing. It’s a Scotch bonnet pepper with a strong cilantro presence—really great with canned fish. I’m one of the soap-tasters who ordinarily steers around cilantro, but this is a very tasty exception. Scotch bonnet > Soap, maybe??

I love this smoked whitefish from Great Lakes, and this has become my favorite variety. The company is small, American-owned, Canadian-partnering, woman-owned, woman-led, focused on bringing canning back to life on the shores of the Lakes. Soooo many great things I like—including lakes!

I don’t always save and use oil from can, but here I just tipped the tin atop a plate of herbed roasted potatoes fresh from the oven. That lemon-dill oil just works great with spuds.

I’d forgotten this can, the last of these Sandwich King sardines in my stash. I was digging deep to see if I had any untried lemon tins, since I’ve been on a citrusy bender. I think this wraps it up.

These were a collaboration between Mr. Sandwich King and The Tinned Fish Market in the UK. They’re no longer available except at auction, but fret not, hungry fishfolk, because this lemon version is currently available from Portuguese label Papa Anzóis, which did the canning for the collab. Here in the States, Portugalia Marketplace stocks them, where I think they’re $8.99. And The Tinned Fish Market is once again able to ship its wares over here.

I just enjoyed the Papa Anzóis version two weeks ago, and it’s fresh in me memory. This Sandwich King edition was precisely the same: Two ginormous, very nicely prepared and cooked pilchards, in quite good oil, and with a good lemony punch.

Side Note on Best By Date: Not sure how it translates through digital photography, but the stamp on the wrapper was slightly tough to read. The date is June 19, 2029, not 2023. These fish were nestled into the can in June, 2025.