Ah bluefish....growing up in New England I recall bluefish prepared a very strange way - I seem to recall sweet pickle relish and breadcrumbs? Something like that. Very odd now that I think back.

Most food fish are pretty ugly.

Quick bluefish recipe.
Fillet a 6 lb bluefish
Add seasonings
Grill on a cedar plank for 4 minutes per side
Throw away the bluefish and eat the plank!

Blues have a very bad reputation. They are a “fishy” fish, especially as they get older and larger. The key with them is to handle properly after being caught. Immediately iced and bled. When cleaned, the dark meat blood line must be removed.

What remains is actually quite decent. And young blues at 3lbs, are actually good. The flesh is firm and white. I season them, flour them, and sauté in butter.

The other good thing? They are fun to catch. Pound for pound the hardest fighters in the Atlantic.

Then it must be a regional term/regional fish....I recall bluefish as a kid as being very dark....like the dark part of swordfish, as opposed to the white. Or dark tuna. Even herring have dark and white parts. Or even as a stretch dark meat chicken.

Blues are caught up and down the east coast, from Maine to Florida. They are a highly migratory fish, following and chasing and consuming bait fish with a voracious appetite. Bluefish blitzes are legendary. They literally tear into anything in front of them.
As for the meat, the color is kind of off white or light red with a pronounced dark section. (Called the blood line). The flesh darkens as the fish ages due to their diet.

I have a theory...I was a kid in the 50s -60s and we didn't have a lot of money, so I think buying the "old" dark bluefish was what my mother could afford (Other than that, I don't recall anything except fried fish sticks) - so since we only wanted hot dogs and hamburgs (note the New England spelling and pronunciation) adding sweet pickle relish to the fish made it taste like a hot dog? We used to go clamming...I recall we'd stomp on the mud until they'd squirt then we'd dig them up. Oh, and believe it or not, lobsters were really cheap so we'd have them a couple of times a year. I never had salmon or trout or mussels, many more, until I was an adult.

Where I grew up, swordfish was the regular Friday night dinner. My parents were extremely frugal so I assume it was the cheapest thing in the fish market. I never saw bluefish sold. Friends would bring them back from shore fishing expeditions along the MA/RI/CT coast and couldn’t give them away.

No, it's an inferior product - mediocre farmed salmon propped up by massive marketing hype.

Yes and no.

Then you might like it. To me it was no different than any other farmed Atlantic salmon. Certainly nothing like the PNW chinook it purports to be.

There's a reason corporate-owned fine dining restaurants with advertising budgets market the heck out of Ora king salmon. Think of it as the Silver Oak of salmons.

Inferior to what? Ora King is probably the best farmed salmon available on the market. It has a green rating from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Other than a handful of other salmon producers, all other farmed salmon is yellow or red.

IMO you can't get a better farmed salmon product on the market than New Zealand King Salmon.

[MENTION=8965]Herb687[/MENTION] are you sure what you ate was Ora King? The biggest hurdle of high end seafood is the traceability and knowing that your hard earned dollars are actually paying for the correct thing.

A new podcast was released that speaks about Ora King salmon - here's a link - listen and learn:


Deep in the Weeds - A Food Podcast with Anthony Huckstep
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000547018912
There are few more important topics than sustainability right now. Especially when it comes to our oceans, waterways and the way we manage our appetite for their glorious bounty. But for Mark Preece (New Zealand King Salmon) setting the standard, and creating best in class fish, by looking after the environment, and the sustainability of the community too is integral with everything they do.

A bit of a thread drift but in the world of farmed salmon I have to throw out a strong recommendation for Creative King Salmon from BC. https://creativesalmon.com/

I don't know how broad they distribute, but our local fishmonger in Seattle has them reliably and it's really enjoyable. Plus, they have a bunch of certifications to stack on top for sustainable, organic, farm-raised salmon.