If you "don't like fish" what do you actually mean?

[SlightlySuperiorPeasant]

DH 'hates fish'. Except fish & chips, or tomato-baked pollack, or Thai steamed trout, or soy-glazed salmon, or sweet chilli cod, or smoked haddock, or French plaice, or stir-fried sea bass, or...

What he actually means is that he's not keen on fish with bones in, seafood (except little prawns) or smoked fish.

I really like fish but prefer fillets to having to deal with heads, tails, fins and zillions of bones.

Does anyone actually not like fish at all, no matter what kind, how it's presented or how it's cooked?

I don't like fish, mainly because it smells of fish. I occasionally have lemon sole if it's same day fresh (occasionally being once every few years), and i did try a mouthful of some kind of fish friends brought back from Menorca which didn't smell of fish at all, and was OK. But nothing seafood whatsoever, DH sneaks in seafood salad if I'm away, and will usually choose a fish option if we eat out. The DC have fish fingers every so often, and sometimes choose fish from the chip van. If I'm feeling flush I'll buy them some of the Youngs fish stuff we product tested last year, but they only really like the more expensive varieties .
Fish is grim. Tentacley seafood is worse [boak].

A local favorite is a pan fried mackerel bap with cheese bought from the chip shop or van it is way more popular than a normal burger or chicken burger. I hot and cold smoke my own using applewood chippings or simply pot the mackerel or herring in a vinegar/wine solution with a few herbs, they keep for months and are nice to have in the winter when line caught fish are not available.

I don't like fish or sea food.

Except tuna with tons of vinegar/mayonnaise.

This thread is making me hungry, I love seafood. The fish haters must count their lucky stars that they weren't born into the sort of community that exists on what it can catch from the sea!

I don't like fish, and I mean that it is too much faff for very little reward. It's not that it tastes bad, it's just that it doesn't taste good enough for all the palaver you have to go through to eat it. All the bones and skin. eugh!!

I don't mind prawns, and will now eat battered fish. I also eat tinned fish occasionally. But given a choice I'd just rather not.

I too have a huge phobia of fish. I do paddle in the very edge of the sea, did go out further into the beautiful warm Indian ocean but spent the time clinging to DH and sobbing, terrified one might brush past me!

I cannot watch TV when fish are on it, struggle a lot with aquariums and have to keep a safe distance at all times.

I have occasional nightmares and they always involve fish.

Therefore, I cannot handle or buy fish, don't like going near the fish counter just in case one is still alive and starts to flap ( very irrational I know!).

My DH and DS love fish so he does it for them quite regularly. I will sometimes eat tuna, in brine, out of a tin but that's it.

I lived in Sweden for a while and went to a crayfish party. That really was pointless. Hours spent de-shelling the things for very little reward!

DameFanny,I really didnt want to say,but ok.
I went to France on a fairly ordinary school's French Exchange.
For some reason,I ended up staying with the wealthiest family,who ironically owned a fish factory.
It was Easter Sunday.We got taken for a seven course meal somewhere with some of their business associates I think. it was difficult to tell,it could have been relatives, but at 14,when they are introduced as Madame this and Mousieur that it can get confusing .Starters,fish,something and chips,all nice but filling,4th course lobster covered in goodness knows what sauce.Think I ate a bit of the 5th course.Well and truly full by that time.
Started feeling iller and iller.
On the way home in their posh car, I had to ask them to stop the car three times in my best french,so I could scramble out and be violently sick by the side of the road.Felt guilty for all the money they had spent.
Not my finest moment,and I have never eaten lobster since.I can still see the sauce too.

The fish dissection at school was the only one i refused to participate in, (eyes, lungs etc were fine )
Am a vegetarian but I imagine if I were no longer a vegetarian I would not want to eat fish anyway!! Am also scared of swimming in the sea...

any fish = boak
would not let partner eat fish served with skin/head on in a restaurant id walk out, if out with a group id ask to change seats so i wouldnt have to see the scales, still might walk out as id literally be boaking and not able to eat own meal
might as well eat a bit of snake IMO

although i will allowed battered breaded fish in the house and even cook it for dcs

PMSL at your DH OP! He doesn't like fish but there's a long list of things he will eat

It's like saying "I don't like meat" but will eat chicken, lamb and beef. Fish is such a wide generic term that it's difficult (unless phobic) to say you don't like any of it.

I remember eating in a restaurant once where almost everyone at the table ordered fish, and it came with the heads on. They cut them off and piled them up on a plate in the middle of the table. Dead fish eyes looking at me.

(did persuade someone to cover them up with a napkin, but tbh I'm not sure if the covered heap of corpses wasn't worse).

Pickled onions are probably my biggest food horror. I used to have to literally leave the room when my flatmates got the jar out. And mayo is banned from my house.

Thanks amillion
I wondered if it would be anything like my friend's story - he no longer eats lobster after cooking two to a strict recipe which started with plunging them live into boiling water. The second refused to die and he ended up shouting 'fgs die, you're overcooked!' [vegemetarian]

I think

I'm not trying to be pedantic, but from reading this thread, I never realised that people use the words fish and seafood separately.
I would consider fish a type of seafood and I'd put fish, crustaceans and shellfish in the seafood category. Or am I wrong?
Are fish and seafood different things?

They are different things, not all fish come from the sea.

Sesame, from my pov seafood is different because it's mostly large water living insect relatives

Oh I get it, you mean river and lakes type fish too, so they are not seafood? Or farmed salmon?
I have been using it interchangably incorrectly all this time!

Lol at damefannys 'die, your overcooked'. My mil thinks I'm a fussy bugger cos they all eat seafood. I love fish, apart from smoked salmon, which is too fishy. But I cannot abide seafood, ie if its got legs or a shell, I don't like it, mostly however cos its too fishy tasting or has a wierd texture.

I'm ok with some fish, cod, haddock, pollock, salmon, tuna, sea bass. Do not like tinned salmon or shellfish. I hate the texture of prawns. Tried scallops at a wedding andthey were ok but I wouldn't choose them. Kids will eat breaded fish/fishcakes/tuna. Dp has never tries tinned tuna and refuses, but loves tinned salmon!

OMG, you cook them while they're still alive? [naive vegetarian]

LOL, do you kill your vegetables before throwing them into a pot of boiling water?

Oh yes, I like calamari, 4yo ds loves it!

:o damefanny

It's definitely the traditional way to cook lobster but I think there are ways of cooking them when they're already dead IYSWIM.