Your Input on a Very Strange Topic

[bunnydoll]

This is probably the genuinely weirdest thing I've ever had to ask in this LJ, but if you could help me out, I'd appreciate it very much.

Comments

[sharona1x2]

I wish I could help, but the only fish I eat is tuna from the can, and the occasional fish and chips. I never ate fish as a kid, so I never learned to like it, either.

[bunnydoll]

Actually, that makes me feel better. Never developing a taste for seafood is my secret shame. I've tried with a very open mind (at least I think it was open) to like it and yet it's like a completely foreign substance to me--like I'm trying to eat a chair or something!

[squidlet]

I live on an island that's famous for chili crab, so I guess I can help?

In general - It's sweet. I don't mean sweet like sugar, more like the sweetness that comes from MSG. Most seafood have that sort of freshness and sweetness if they're any good.

Fish - the flake, I think. But different kinds of fish have different styles of yumminess. Some things like tuna and swordfish have a tougher, more chewy texture (much like how venison is gamier). Other things like sea bass are generally described as silken. Sashimi is different though.

Shellfish - Chewy, delicious. Black abalone is close to extinction for a reason. Abalone steaks - like bubblegum in its chewiness but better.

prawns and lobsters - really sweet. Raw shrimp is so sweet it's kind of shocking at the beginning.

All these things are best eaten while barely alive.

I don't think it was very coherent, but I've made myself hungry anyway -_-;;

[bunnydoll]

Thank you--that's very helpful! I was too ineloquent to write it in the entry, but it was the nature of the sweetness I was most interested in. You always hear that term thrown around with seafood, but I never really had a grip on it until I read what you said.

[starpush]

The thing I love about fish -- with salmon being my absolute favorite -- is that it is so much lighter than chicken, beef, pork, etc. And it just seems to match itself really, really well with veggies or rice.

I'm not sure what it is about shellfish that I dig so much... I just do. Shrimp, lobster, crab... yum. One friend of mine said he loves crab so much because there is something primal about it. It comes right out of the sea and even if you buy it in the store you still have rip it apart with tools or your hands, and that even the most civilized of people look primal when eating crab.

[gisho]

Really good seafood, and even bad seafood to an extent, has a very light texture. You don't have to chew hard to get through it, like you do with chicken or beef; nor does it dominate any dish it's in just by virtue of being there.

[thinking_lotus]

I think people have covered it pretty well--lightness, an almost mousse-like texture, soft, silken, slightly salty sweetness. Some types of shellfish are chewy (squid or some parts of lobster) but as someone mentioned above, it's a candy-ish chewiness.

I adores seafood and have been eating it since I was tiny. But I grew up on a coast with a seafood loving mom (my father, from Ohio, was harder to persuade). It's hard for to imagine not liking seafood.

I otoh, dislike coffee, and I feel about drinking it the same way you seem to about eating seafood -- there doesn't seem to be any point. Yet I know many people adore their first morning cup.