Why don’t we eat more fish and seafood?

[KhansMambo]

A friend and I were chatting about fish and seafood (it’s Easter, after all), and wondering why the U.K. doesn’t have more of a fish/seafood culture or seafood based cuisine. Apart from the occasional bit of battered and deep fried fish, it doesn’t feature largely in a lot of people’s usual diets. And we consume markedly less than other countries with similar access.

As we’ve had so much access to it, historically, it’s interesting that it’s not the core of our traditional diet. Why don’t we have hundreds of razor clam recipes? Why didn’t everyone grow up eating an array of fish stews? Or using different kinds of seafood and seaweed as seasoning? I’m sure there’s all sorts of interesting anthropological reasons. I was wondering what everyone thought they were.

A quick Google dig up these, which I thought were really interesting.

• www.spectator.co.uk/article/britains-strange-aversion-to-seafood/amp

• www.newstatesman.com/culture/food-drink/2021/09/britain-is-surrounded-by-fish-so-why-do-we-eat-so-little-of-it

I love all fish, but honestly, I rarely think to buy it! When I do look at it, I'm often put off by the price.
£5 for 2 tiny salmon fillets, or pay the same amount for 6-8 chicken breasts? For those on a tight budget it's an easy decision to plump for the chicken.

Fish is expensive based on whether or not it will fill you up: £4 for a bit of plaice. The best way to eat fish, all round, is probably fish and chips, as for all the effort the shop goes to, the price is not a lot more than fresh, and they can give you some massive pieces of cod.

I really love whitebait.

A lot of people eat frozen prawns because it's an easy ingredient to add to so many carbohydrates and to dress in a special sauce, or tomato based one. For many, it is like strips of chicken as a convenient staple to have in the freezer.
With fresh shell fish, you have the uncertainty of whether they are properly cooked, fresh, bits of stomach contact in them. Fish bones are a turn-off.

I recently discovered that tinned sardines added to spag bol or chilli con carne give it a really soft texture and a nice edgy taste - fish and meat together = surprisingly nice. 36p a tin in Aldi is a very reasonable price.

Because we've polluted the oceans and fish are now full of micro plastics. Well that's why I don't eat it anyway. Apparently there'll be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 shock

This 100%. We only eat one or two portion a week. Ages ago women of child-bearing age were warned against eating more than this per week because of the pollution fish ingest.

Never before has there been a thread where hundreds of people were so categorically incapable of reading the OP.

My God.

It's an interesting question OP. I've been thinking about our food culture a lot over the last few months as I've attended some cooking classes (in various Asian cuisines) and it's made me realise it's just so odd that we don't have a discernible set of food and eating traditions in the same way as most other countries. I was wondering about the impact of the empire and the way we have imported (and appropriated) so many foods. And the class system - perhaps we didn't develop a strong locally-sourced cuisine because we were divided into working classes (no time to make good food as always working) and richer classes (eating imported food as a show of wealth?) But it doesn't make sense at all that we wouldn't use the abundant seafood and other produce we have in our own cuisine, at least historically if not now. I think development and preservation of food culture is fascinating although I clearly know very little about it!

I watched the early Delia Smith cooking show recently and she had quite a lot of fish recipes. Things like white fish with a parsley sauce, salmon a few different ways, fish pies, fish soup.... I wonder whether it's a very recent thing?

I HRTFT but totally agree OP.

I adore fish / seafood and we eat it 4/5 days a week. But that's unusual. I think it's a combination of expense, lack of availability and lack of culinary tradition around it (beyond fish and chips). Fish needs to be handled carefully to get the most out of it.

@Flumpaphone, in a fishmonger, the flat fish are left whole so you can see the eyes are bright and clear, which proves they are fresh. When you buy the fish, the fishmonger should ask if you want it cleaned and trimmed to the body and meat, or filleted. And if it's naice flatfish like sole or turbot do you want the frames to make fish stock or soup?

If you buy wild seabass, get the fishmonger to descale it; doing it yourself will have you washing the scales off your kitchen walls for months.

My local fishmonger is really generous (most are) when you want frames: we wanted to make some bouillabaisse a few months ago, and bought a selection of cheapish fish, but asked for frames and they gave us 2kg of sole and turbot frames, so the fish was cheap but the stock was luscious, made from the bones of the most expensive fish on the counter.

Gurnard (very ugly fish but common and sustainable) makes an awesome fish curry with spinach.

So you see a nice-looking bit of fish and say you'll have that and they throw it on the scale and wham — it costs three times what you expected and so you either have to say you don't want it because it's too expensive or fork out half the week's food budget for it.

It’s tricky, but I’ve found saying to the butcher/fishmonger “I have X to spend, to feed X people, what do you recommend?’ is the best way to avoid nasty surprises, and get some decent recommendations. Any butcher/fishmonger worth their salt should be able to work with a budget.