I was watching Rachel Ray’s 30 minutes meals and she made a tuna puttanesca sauce and I remember thinking that it might work with sardines. I’m sure you could find the recipe on the Food Network site, foodtv.com. But it was basically a puttanesca sauce without anchovies but with lots of tuna instead.
Now I am craving sardines but the boyfriend is coming over for a couple days and he doesn’t like fish and I won’t even eat it around him lest I have to listen to his snarky comments about my food choices, like some of those in this thread.
By the way, I give the sardine guts to my cats, I could not open a can of sardines and not give them a taste unless I wished to be murdered in my sleep.
Are you looking for something quick and dirty or something to prepare for a real meal?
In tomato sauce with capers over polenta, they are a real hit.
Also in a vinaigrette, over Saltines (think Pico de Gallo), or even go all the way and make tacos.
One general tip (unless you have found something you like), skip the prepared cans. Go for plain in olive oil, add the seasonings yourself. That’s the difference between eating something that came from a can and something that tastes like a can.
The bitch about canned sardines is that they disintegrate by just looking at them sideways, which limits your options cooking them. You either have them mashed, or you are just adding some sauce on top (and keeping all the tin taste).
I put about one eighth cup of chopped olives in a tiny tupperware container, and a fine chopped shallot (about a quarter cup) in another. I covered the shallot with fresh ground pepper, and a tablespoon of lemon juice, and shook it up, so it wouldn’t get brown. I put a bit more than a quarter cup of Medium Salsa in a larger bowl, and sealed it up. I put those, and an small Hass Avocado, and a can of “King Oscar two layer sardines in olive oil” into my lunch bag.
Come lunch time, I peeled and mushed up the Avocado, drained about half the oil, or more off the sardines, and dumped everything into the bowl the salsa was in, and stirred it up. I just ate it with a spoon, but you could use chips with it, or make it into a sandwich, if you wanted to. I enjoyed it a lot.
Later in the week, I will try another tin of sardines, and see what happens to them.
I’ll add hot pepper flakes occasionally but, to be honest, canned sardines pack quite a lot of flavor as it is. I normally just eat them with some Swedish crisp bread.
Sardine virgin here - I’d like to try them, just to get more seafood into my diet, but I’m a coward. What do they taste like? Is it like tuna at all? I’ve always avoided them because they look so disgusting, but that’s pretty ignorant of me, and we’re all about fighting that, right? So what should I be prepared for?
You know how anchovies taste: a little bit fishy and a lot salty. Sardines’ fishy taste varies from brand to brand, but they are generally not very salty. I’ve had sardines that I had to ‘doctor’ to make them edible, and ones whose taste was so delicate I thought the Club Crackers I put them on were too strong for the fish. But generally, to me, sardines taste a little bit like chunk light tuna in oil. The texture is completely different, but they’re closer to tuna than anything else I can think of at the moment.
And yeah, I always like to have a tin of anchovies around just in case. Usually I use them when I make a frozen pizza, but they’re good with knäckebröd too.
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a sardine in my life. I can’t decide, from reading the thread and recipe suggestions, if I would really like them or really dislike them. Hm.
Not an answer to the OP, I know. But there you are.
I just need to find a brand that packs them the short way in the can.
Savannah. Just go out and buy a tin, even the most expensive one won’t leave a mark on your budget. Then pick a recipe or style from the thread and dig in. I’d recommend something simple first so you’re actually experiencing the sardine rather than all the additives.
I haven’t yet tried sardines, but I do like anchovies, one thing I’ve found to mitigate some of the intense saltiness from anchovies is to rinse them very thoroughly before eating, make sure to get as much of the oil and salt out of them as possible, they become much more palatable, and don’t end up tasting like salt-wrapped-salt
hmm, wonder what heating them up in my cast iron skillet would do to them, that thing makes everything taste better
Consider Riga smoked sprats. It’s pretty much sardines that have been smoked and layered in what I feel is a better oil*. I usually get them for around 99 cents/can around here. Word to the wise: Dispose of the tin and remaining oil immediately. Like outside. And maybe a few doors down. The aroma turns from smokey-tasty to foul-deadfishy within a few hours.
