By Taylor Sutton, MS, RD
United Supermarkets’ Lifestyle Desk
Happy National Seafood Month! Consuming seafood twice a week for its health benefits is a great goal and the current recommendation if you’re not consuming any on a regular basis.
Some big ideas surrounding seafood are its price point, palatability, and challenge in cooking. With the price point challenge, we recommend watching the weekly ads, or opting for packed in water canned fish. With the palatability challenge it’s much like how you would feed a baby. It takes on average 22 exposures to a food for them to be able to communicate if they do or do not prefer a food.
Point being, multiple reintroductions with different methods of cooking or seasonings are key to expanding the palate. Finally, the challenge of cooking seafood is something we hear the most often. There are many different ways to cook all types of seafood and some might be better than others depending on the type of seafood as well as the recipe itself. Here are some of our favorite ways:
Baking
Cook with high heat and less time or cook with low heat and more time. There’s no wrong way to go! There are two schools of thought here and it really depends on what fish, and its thickness, you’re cooking. Play around with both methods and see what works best for you. Salmon is an easy fish to start with here!
Broiling
Want the grill taste without firing up the grill? Season your fish as you’d like and turn your fish skin side up when ready to broil. It’s a fast method so keep an eye out!
Grilling
Another high heat method, but with all the outdoor and wood flavors but be sure to cook this one skin side down and the leave the skin on to enhance the flavor.
Poaching
Warm up your sauce of choice in a pan, or water in a pot, and submerge your seafood in. The warmth will slowly cook through it as well as intensify the flavors. If you choose a sauce you can also opt to add in a bit of water or stock. The reason we like this option is because it infuses flavor quickly!
Pan Roasting
Depending on the type, thickness, and overall flavor you are going for this is one of our Dietitian’s favorite ways to cook seafood. Coat your pan with an oil of your choice, start with the skin side down, let your fish go for a few minutes on each side and pull it off to rest.
If you’re new to cooking fish or still intimidated by cooking seafood but want to start incorporating more in your diet, ask our team to steam it for you the next time you’re shopping! You’ll be getting the benefits without pulling out the cooking utensils. This will also allow you to season it yourself when you’re home with whatever is on the menu that night! Want to go an easier route? Try this recipe with canned fish for an easy weeknight comfort food meal.
Canned Crab Pot Pie
What You Need
12 oz. canned crab
1, 16 oz. bag frozen peas & carrots
1, 10 oz. bag frozen mushrooms
1 lemon
2 Tbsp. parsley
2 Tbsp. clam juice
1/4 c. canned pumpkin
1 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. Pepper
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. Onion powder
1 sheets puff pastry
3 Tbsp. Milk
2 Tbsp. flour
1 egg
How It’s Made
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a large pan saute frozen vegetables and let all the water it creates, evaporate
3. Add in lemon zest and juice, parsley, clam juice, canned pumpkin, salt and pepper, garlic and onion powder
4. Drain canned crab and combine into vegetables
5. Sprinkle flour over mixture and combine
6. Add in milk and combine
7. Thinly roll puff pastry and cut to 8 x 8 dish and place inside
8. Use leaf and pumpkin cookie cutters to cut out shapes to put on the sides of the crust
9. Pour mixture into dish and fold over any excess dough and place shapes on crust sides
10. Crack and whisk an egg and brush onto crust
11. Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown
