In support of this… not long ago, a commercial fisherman told me the freshest fish he’d ever had, aside from fish he’d pulled from the ocean and cooked immediately, was at a Red Lobster (where I assume everything arrived frozen). He said it must have been frozen as soon as it was hauled onto the boat.
This makes sense – frozen vegetables supposedly retain more nutrients since they’re frozen shortly after coming out of the field, whereas fresh vegetables may be stored for months, losing nutrients. Fish would deteriorate even faster.
There are a couple of factors at work with freezing.
One is how quickly the food is frozen - the faster the freezing occurs the smaller the resulting ice crystals formed and less freezing affects taste and texture. Commercial “flash-freezing” is pretty good these days, your home freezer less so.
Another big factor is that for ideal taste/texture once the fish is frozen it should STAY frozen - thawing/refreezing does bad things to the taste and texture, and the more such cycles the worse things get.
So fish flash frozen just after capture (or capture and immediate processing) and kept properly frozen is going to be pretty good, and quite off better than “fresh” fish transported over large distances. Thus, sitting here in the Midwest thousands of miles from an ocean flash-frozen ocean fish can be a pretty good option over “fresh” that had taken a couple days to get there regardless of whether it’s kept on ice or not. (On the other hand, fish from the Great Lakes can potentially be same-day catch due to proximity) Though with modern chilling/freezing techniques both can be healthy and edible fish, we’re basically talking about optimizing qualities here.
One important effect of freezing fish is killing parasites. Any “sushi-grade” fish you’ve ever purchased in the US has been frozen…
I’ve posted this in another thread where the OP (sure it wasn’t you) falsely claimed that fresh fish couldn’t be found anywhere in the U.S. He/she was irrefutably proven wrong by others and myself.
In Hawaii we have fresh fish of various types sold as sashimi and poke. BTW, “sushi grade” anything is meaningless as virtually any type of fish of any grade can be used for sushi or sashimi.
Edit: Not all the fresh fish is from Hawaiian waters. Some stores have fresh, never frozen fish flown in from Japan.
Edit 2: I usually buy fresh #2 tuna for my sashimi because it’s cheaper. Like beef, the grading is subjective and based on appearance, fattiness and color among other criteria. And there’s no fish inspector standing there asking me if I’m going to cook the hell out of it to kill all them parasites! ;-p
As for freezing, actually flash freezing. Some (most?) of the best and most expensive tuna sold in Japan is flash frozen on the ship. So correct freezing can preserve the taste and quality of fish.
I’m not going to dispute what you say about the fish supply in Hawaii, but I will say that in the state in which I live regulations require that fish sold raw in sushi MUST be frozen for 72 hours at a stated temperature, and the purpose is to kill off parasites. Sushi venues in this state typically have a small placard to this effect, along with the usual cautions about the risk of eating under/uncooked fish.
This is likely a law that appears again and again in the interior of the continental US. It is entirely possible that someone who has encountered this multiple times in multiple states may erroneously extrapolate this to the entire US.
Understand and agree about posters thinking what applies in their area is Federally mandated. But we’re here to Fight Ignorance. ;-p
Some local restaurants that don’t serve sushi or sashimi have a sign warning that eating raw or undercooked fish may be hazardous.
## What the FDA Guidelines Mean (and Why Tuna and Farmed Salmon Are So Common)
Regulations regarding fish sold for raw consumption vary from state to state, although every state points to FDA guidelines as the gold standard; the key difference between the states is whether those guidelines are enforced. Haraguchi and Herron note that both the New York City Department of Health (which regulates restaurants in NYC) and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (which regulates fish markets throughout the state) have adopted the FDA guidelines as law. While those recommendations are primarily focused on limiting pathogenic bacterial growth (more on that below), they do include rigorous specifications for killing parasites.
Herron describes those specifications this way: “Any wild fish except tuna species—bigeye, yellowfin, bluefin, bonito/skipjack—those wild fish need to be frozen for specific periods of time at specific temperatures to get rid of parasites.” The exact temperatures and times can be found on the FDA website, but suffice it to say that those temperatures, reaching as low as -31°F, are well below what a home freezer can reliably produce and maintain, which is why it isn’t advisable to try this at home. Sushi restaurants and fish markets use what’s called a “super freezer,” which is exactly what it sounds like: a freezer that maintains super-cold temperatures. (Osakana’s super freezer, for example, maintains a temperature of -60°F.)
This FDA table details the species-specific risks of live parasites in fish. But the information here is a little misleading, and meant to serve more as an agency warning about the perils of mislabeling fish than as a practical guide to which fish must be frozen prior to raw consumption. Exempted from the FDA’s freezing requirements are, as Herron mentions, large species of tuna—deemed safe based on the frequency with which they are eaten in raw form and the infrequency of related, documented parasitic infection—as well as aquacultured fish, like salmon, given verification that the feed it’s raised on is parasite-free. To meet FDA guidelines, every other type of fish must be frozen to those temperatures, even if the table does not indicate that it carries a parasite risk, because it “may have a parasite hazard that has not been identified if these fish are not customarily consumed raw or undercooked.”
Back in the 1980s, I lived for 3 years on Pohnpei, a tiny island in the tropical Pacific. We had virtually constant access to just-caught tuna for sublime fresh sushi and sashimi.
It was generally considered that eating sashimi “too” fresh - as in, just cut straight from the fish that had just been caught, never chilled - was not quite as good. I mean sure, obviously it was tasty, but the texture was a little too mushy or something. It was standard practice to throw the freshly caught fish into the freezer briefly, not for the purposes of freezing the fish but to make the texture more toothsome.
This is strictly tuna, eaten raw, I’m talking about. I wouldn’t know if salmon also benefits from a quick chill or if it’s different if you’re going to cook the fish. But, I’ve had tuna sashimi both ways - on the boat and after the day’s catch got thrown into the freezer for a short while (can’t remember how long - maybe just half an hour or so), The texture of the latter was definitely preferable.
I think it’s because tuna are warm-blooded. Probably like having to bleed an animal immediately after it’s killed or the meat will have a tainted flavor and spoil quickly.
As an aside, in case anyone is questioning that we have fresh fish for sashimi and poke here in Hawaii, here’s a local ad: https://ibb.co/Smwwpks. Even the salmon poke is fresh.
BTW, just as sushi can be made with cooked seafood, so can poke be made with cooked seafood, notably octopus and clams.
Edit: Ika is squid, which I’ve never seen fresh here.
Saw this on a Japanese TV show. A chef showed how he handled frozen tuna for his sushi. He put sheets of wet konbu/kombu (strip seaweed) on both sides of the fish to retain moisture and add a bit of the ocean flavor back into fish while he allowed it to thaw in the fridge. Note that there’s different types of konbu, including some that are very expensive. He used dashi (soup stock) konbu which is thicker and more intense flavored than nishime (Japanese vegetable stew) konbu, which is thinner and more expensive. You can’t really eat dashi konbu because it’s tough and stringy, and by the time you’ve cooked it enough to be edible, all the flavor is gone.
It depends where you live. When I lived within 30 miles of the Pacific Ocean the answer was a definitive yes. Out here in Colorado, if it is not frozen then the fish is half-rotted by the time it gets on the shelves.
I find this interesting. We can get fresh fish from Japan which is twice the distance than across the U.S. mainland. And the ad I posted shows fresh salmon from New Zealand. Yes, it’s not cheap, but it’s not outrageously priced either. But I guess that’s relative to how much more we’re used to paying for everything and the demand for fresh fish because we’re used to having it.
For New Year, when for many eating sashimi is a must, even locally caught tuna can go for over $100/pound.
Back to the OP question. There’s a large food distributor here who opened up their wholesale store to the public (can’t remember the name), where you can buy the same bulk products that restaurants use. They have frozen pre-cut tuna pieces that look and taste exactly like what you get at the rotary sushi places, who don’t claim to have fresh fish. I don’t remember where the origin is. Possibly from Hawaii.
I bought it a couple of times and ate it as sashimi. Yes, in this case the flavor is distinctly different from fresh. Not bad, but not good either. Much more palatable as cheap sushi.
Edit: Curious. How much does tuna, fresh or frozen cost in your area? Here, depending on the season and weather, it varies between $12-25/pound. Don’t know about other fish, because I never buy it.
I am certain that if I still lived in the city of Chicago proper I could get fish flown in just mere hours from being in the ocean… but there is probably not sufficient demand or willingness to pay the premium prices in my neighborhood.
I saw a bear once that was enjoying the freshest salmon available. When it heard me approaching it took off running. It was dragging a tape worm so long that one half was coming out of it’s ass and and the other was flapping behind it and dragging in the dirt
Everyone has sort of hit on it and I agree. I live in WV and regularly fish. Trout and bass and the like. If you cook them immediately, like within 30 minutes of swimming, they are amazing. If you put them in the fridge even for a day they start to get a “fish” smell and aren’t that great. I’ve learned that if I’m not eating them that night, they go in the freezer because the taste is far better than a day old in the refrigerator, but not as good as 30 minutes.
I think grocery stores try “fresh” fish, but it is hours or days until they get to the store. Buy them right off the boat or freeze them, IMHO.
The best fish I’ve ever had was a place called Mamma’s Fish House on Maui. The restaurant owns it’s own fishing boat, and their menu changes based on what their fishermen caught that day. So in other words, whatever you order, it is guaranteed to have been caught the same day.
Lee’s Roadside Grill in St Martin has a boat and takes out 4 people for fishing charters twice daily. You don’t keep your catch, it goes to the restaurant. I always get a whole grilled snapper, leaving behind the head and skeleton.
Yeah, freshest fish I’ve had was some I caught that morning and my grandmother cooked up for lunch. And if you cleaned and froze the fish right away after it was caught, it was still fantastic when it was finally cooked, even weeks or months later. But if you waited a few days, it was no longer good.