"Fish Shopping" by Telechalb Blailes

Time is one of those things that we cannot control; it has a significant influence in planning, scheduling, enjoying, and just living our lives, even to the detail tasks we do everyday such as shopping at a grocery store. Shopping is time consuming and often the lack of time results in buying products that we do not carefully examine, and may be harmful to ourselves, especially children. This short writing briefly outlines some of the buying techniques when purchasing fish including some tips on cooking.

Most grocery seafood departments sell fish either fresh, frozen, or frozen and thaw out to approximately 32 deg. F, temperature before sale. Fresh fish expires after four days, but include one to three days of actual time most store display them, thus resulting a possible five to eight days before actual discard of the fish. When buying fresh fish, some of the external features you need to observe are the eyes, gills if not drawn, skin color and texture, and uniformity of the fins. The eyes should be clear and bulging, not sunken, or blurry. The gills should be naturally clean and brightly colored with no presence of slime or graying in gill’s fibers. The skin should be smooth, stiff, with unbroken scales and fins, shiny and damp to the touch. However, the ultimate test for fresh products is smelling the fish, ask the clerk if you can smell the fish, if it has a strong fishy odor almost like dirty socks, do not buy it. Sniff the inside cavity of the fish not the external body surface.

Frozen products have a shelf life of thirty days if it’s not vacuum packed, eighty-nine days if it’s vacuum packed. Frozen products must be destroyed after expiration date, but do seafood managers really discard them? Here’s a suggestion, if buying frozen product, ask the seafood clerk for items out of its shipping box, including fresh products too. There is a back stock of frozen or fresh items usually stored in the freezer room or the refrigerator, and they will get it for you if you ask nicely. Also choosing and working with a particular clerk for most of your transactions, this usually builds a relationship of trust and familiarity that definitely will benefit you.

Another important information about fish is their origin of harvest, this data indicates whether its wild caught or farmed raised. By law, the price sign for a fish product should show the place of origin of harvest indicating if it is a wild, farmed product of USA or a foreign country. There’s a long debate between the quality of wild caught and farmed raised fish, thus the topic will not be discussed here.

The basic rule for cooking fish is ten minutes per inch of thickness in cooking time. Depending on the intensity of cooking heat, thin fillets usually cooks within two to three minutes while thick steaks or fillets are between eight to twelve minutes to an internal temperature of 125F to 130F. For less time cooking, thin fillets such as sole or tilapia are appropriate, but be careful about overcooking which could results in dryness of the fillets. Thin fillets can easily be pan-fried, grilled, or baked with salt and pepper to your taste or other seasonings and used for sandwiched, tacos, or salads. Then with these modest suggestions, writer hopes you can lower your shopping time, but shop effectively and acquiring good products thus making more time for other things in your life such as family, volunteer services, etc. Oh, always remember this cardinal rule about food shopping; do not anger your server, he or she who serves or prepare your food.