The trend of eating tinned fish was all the rage on TikTok when people were finding fun new packaged, canned or tinned fish to pair with a charcuterie board.
@eatfishwife a saturday morning snack plate featuring pita crackers, cornichon’s, radishes, lemon, herbed butter, and a tin of smoked salmon 🥖🍋 all assembled beautifully on the sweetest little cake plates from @East Fork 🍽️ !!! #fishwife #snackplates #snackplateideas #snackysnack #eastforkpottery
♬ original sound - estwne
While not as popular as it once was, it’s still considered a great way to upscale a dish without a lot of effort. Anything from calamari, tuna and sardines are canned for an easy, quick and nutritious dish.
Can we eat tinned fish?
Yes, canned fish is safe to eat. Canned tuna mixed with mayonnaise, mustard and pickles for a sandwich and canned sardines are perhaps the most well known and used.
Checking the expiration date and for any damage in the packaging are best practices when eating canned fish.
Is tinned fish expensive?
Tinned fish is known for being a non-expensive, shelf-storage food. Consumers can get a can of sardines at supermarkets for less than a dollar.
But since becoming viral, demand, colorful packaging and higher quality ingredients have come together to create a fancier version of tinned fish available to consumers, per Tasting Table.
Now, ink-drenched squid, geoduck, smoked anchovies and salmon in cans and tins can range from $12 to more than $40, per Eater. One restaurant in New York City called the Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine sells one tin of sardines for $44, served with gold leaf.
What is the best tinned fish to eat?
If finding fancy boxes and quality ingredients to complete your charcuterie board aesthetic is on your to-do list, Bon Appetit suggests these five brands:
What are the disadvantages of tinned fish? Is canned tuna bad for you?
Canned fish has nutrients such as protein, omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and is as healthy for you as fresh fish, per Harvard Health.
Sometimes canned fish can be higher in sodium than fresh, depending on how the company chooses to package it, and it is more likely higher in calcium, as it gives the calcium in the bones more time to enter the meat, per The New York Times. Canned salmon is also more likely to be wild than fresh-farmed fish.