While at Sam Woo BBQ - Alhambra recently to pick up a to-go order, I saw a young couple in front of me buy a bag of Sam Woo Crisp Fish Skin. Huh! I've never seen this before.
Is it good? I asked the cashier.
She said it was, and at $2 a bag, not too bad of a price to experiment. They had regular and laver flavor. I opted for the seaweed, thinking just plain fried fish skin didn't sound very flavorful. I thought maybe it'd be like the salmon skin in salmon skin rolls at Japanese restaurants?
After popping open the bag, there was very little fish skin. Hmm. The $2 isn't such a great deal after all...
You can see the alternating light and dark sides that show it's obviously fish skin. Lots of bits of seaweed dusting the outside.
How did it taste?
Light, crispy, and full of seaweed flavor. It was actually pretty tasty.
I found the cartoons on the back of the bag with directions on how to eat the crisp fish skin pretty amusing. Direct eating, that's what I did.
A crudite platter with veggies and crisp fish skin?
I can't imagine putting the fish skin in a hot pot. It'll lose all crispness, which rather defeats the purpose.
The ingredients seemed simple enough if you want to fry your own fish skin. My main problem is that de-scaling fish is such a pain, I can't imagine how much work it'd be to remove fish skin to make this snack.
Instead, I ate it with rice and my Thai Basil Beef Stir-fry; the crispy fish skin provided a lovely crunch and flavor contrast, especially with the runny egg yolk. Yum!
A fun little experiment with a new to me food.
Other Fun Food posts.
Sam Woo BBQ
514 W. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91801
626-281-0038
Sunday to Thursday 9 a.m. to midnight
Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 a.m.
*****
1 year ago today,
2 years ago today,
3 years ago today, Zuppa Toscana (Italian Tuscan Soup) alla Olive Garden.
4 years ago today, One Sunset - West Hollywood (Closed).
5 years ago today, Tri-Colored Roasted Carrots.
6 years ago today, Shanghainese food at Mei Long Village - San Gabriel.
I really dislike your aggressive watermarks. I'm sadly going to remove this blog from my RSS feed.
ReplyDeleteElbowspeak,
ReplyDeleteSorry you feel that way, but I've had far too many instances of people stealing my photos and recipes, cutting out my watermarks, and republishing everything as if it were theirs. I had to move the watermarks into central parts of the photos so that cutting them out would affect the photo quality, and hopefully cut down on content theft.
Mmmm! Fish skin! I love fried salmon skin. One of my favorite parts of fried catfish is the crispy, crispy tail. And once I was in rural Indiana and they had fish tail sandwiches on the menu! Didn't get it, but I was curious.
ReplyDeletePS. I understand why you put that watermark in the picture!!!! Other bloggers and that so-called food critic stealing your hard-won pics would tick anybody off.
ReplyDeleteTracie,
ReplyDeleteI do too. Salmon skin is one of my favorite sushi rolls. Fish tail sandwiches sounds curious to me too, but I know some people really like the tail meat.
Thanks for understanding. One or two photos is irritating, but having entire posts lifted and republished on commercial websites is really troublesome. It's very discouraging to continue blogging when other people are profiting from my hard work.
I like fish but not the really fishy smelling kind. Most of the fishy smell comes from the skin so I'll have to pass on this delicacy.
ReplyDeleteIn the US they just discard the fish skins along with the other non filet parts to be processed into fishmeal fertilizer or animal feeds. Like pork skins, they mostly are discarded with a very small amount being processed into fried pork rinds (chicharron). Say, you haven't done a blog on fried pork fat : top mo or tep mo? Vietnamese bacon... yum.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteThe seaweed flavor disguised some of the fishy smell. It wasn't that bad, but not worth the money. I saw an episode of "Undercover Boss" where they had the skin and guts being churned and made into fishmeal. It was gross! But I guess at least they're not wasting any parts?
My brother deep-fried some organic pork skin and it had a weird bitter aftertaste. Not sure why. I haven't tried myself.