Tinned Fish Recipes

February 25, 2025 7:04 PM

Tinned Fish Recipes What it says on the tin. It seems appropriate to say

To be clear, the recipes are part of a store website but there are some nice pictures, a short but interesting origin story and some simple but delicious-sounding sardine recipes.

posted by ashbury (37 comments total)

There's a bar like 50 meters down the street from my place that's a "tinned fish bar". I was like what the hell, and went in and looked at the menu, and yep, it's wine and tinned fish. I don't like bars, alcohol or seafood, so it's of negative interest to me personally, but people seem to like it—though anything would do well in that location, it's right across the street from the city's biggest park—so, have fun! It's like a different universe: there are people out there who want to pay $14 to split a tin of sardines, which is like a 9/10 yuck factor for me personally, but a great thing because it disproves solipsism, as I would never have been able to make that up.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:15 PM on February 25 [11 favorites]

Mei Liao (instagram) also has some great ones in her Tinned Fish Talk videos!
posted by capricorn at 7:24 PM on February 25

What's a 10/10 yuck factor for you?
posted by Mr. Yuck at 7:43 PM on February 25 [12 favorites]

This is amazing! I’ve been enjoying eating conservas a lot more but have been looking for ways to jazz up the experience a bit. Also, if you’re interested in tinned fish, I definitely recommend the Canned Fish Files.
posted by thebots at 7:47 PM on February 25

What's a 10/10 yuck factor for you?
posted by Mr. Yuck

I see what you did there.
posted by notoriety public at 7:49 PM on February 25 [4 favorites]

I kind of get the wine and tinned fish thing, as they could both be staples of adult cocktail parties where neither the booze nor the hors d'oeuvres were particularly fancy; when I was a kid in the seventies, I developed a bit of a taste for canned oysters and pickled herring in sour cream from cleaning up the leftovers from such parties, and although I haven't had a canned oyster in an age (except for occasionally on Thanksgiving with a particular uncle who liked stuffing made with them), I used to partake of pickled herring myself in my own boozing days. It's kind of adjacent to charcuterie.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:49 PM on February 25 [2 favorites]

So Oscar Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland started a sardine tasting club, on the premise that since olive oil varies from year to year, there would be greater and lesser sardine vintages... there are quite a few references to this online, but what I recall from a book I read once but now cannot find is that the club foundered, largely because there are no such variations in tinned sardines.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:51 PM on February 25 [3 favorites]

YUMMMMM thanks for sharing this.... I'm hungry!!!!
posted by wats at 8:52 PM on February 25

Raise your hand if you'd make tuna melt night happen 3 times per week

I said it, I don't care.
posted by ginger.beef at 9:16 PM on February 25 [9 favorites]

I eat sardines often. High in protein, full of Omega 3s, cheap-ish, convenient, sustainable. Plopping sardines in a salad is a super easy and yummy way to add them to your diet for sure!

Trout comes in a tin as well! Get some at TJ's, add them to a scramble with some tomatoes, green onions. Top with cream cheese, hot sauce. My GAWD.
posted by alex_skazat at 9:22 PM on February 25 [6 favorites]

One of my favorite offbeat YouTube channels is this guy Matthew Carlson who basically just samples different kinds of tinned fish at his computer desk and gives his opinions in a great, deadpan kind of way. No recipes for Matty--he enjoys his sardines straight out of the tin. What are we even doing here?

[Edit: Dang, missed that thebots made the recco already earlier in the thread. Great minds!]
posted by flod at 9:23 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

There's a Mountain Goats song to accompany your tinned fish eating, whether legally acquired or not.
posted by oc-to-po-des at 11:20 PM on February 25 [3 favorites]

recipe = over the sink with a fork at midnight
posted by away for regrooving at 11:27 PM on February 25 [7 favorites]

I came across this site last summer after returning from a trip to Lisbon, where the sardine reigns supreme. There are tourist-focused shops in the middle of the city called "The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine" where you can buy tins of the little guys with different years displayed on them; they can't have been dated by year of canning, though, or they'd be selling century-old tins of fish. The tourist-focused tins were too expensive for my blood, so I just picked up a few from a corner shop near the Museu do Oriente a couple of miles from the city centre. (Which was also a better bet for snagging a bottle of ginjinha that didn't cost the earth.)

I imagine a fair few Mefites can relate to stories of Lisbon, because the city seemed to have more American tourists as a proportion of visitors overall than any other European city I've visited. I'm guessing it's because it feels closer to the east coast of the US than most, and the flights are a bit cheaper. It's a great destination, in any case, and I loved it. There's a lot more to it than sardines—although I did buy some souvenir shot glasses decorated with sardines to drink my ginjinha from.

Anyway, that trip totally converted me to sardines after a lifetime of indifference, and I found this site a useful source of ideas for using them. It also had good ideas for some tins of mussels that Lidl was selling cheap a while ago. None of that helps the proprietor's aim of selling me more tins of fish, but maybe when I run out...

And yes, I did think about Miguel Cardoso once or twice as I was exploring the city.
posted by rory at 12:25 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

Ooh ooh! I love this stuff!
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:20 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Minerva or GTFO
posted by chavenet at 3:58 AM on February 26

What's a 10/10 yuck factor for you?

Any kind of non-fish seafood, it's heebing my jeebies just thinking about eating a crab or oyster. Also, anything that's even touched an olive or a mushroom.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:28 AM on February 26

I love tinned fish. I bought a set of large stainless tweezers to use in the kitchen several years ago, and they are perfect for grabbing little fish.
posted by Wilbefort at 6:16 AM on February 26

As someone who theoretically likes sardines, knows they're healthy, has a Costco pack of sardine tins, and still can't figure out quite how to eat them - that collection of sardine recipes is actually fantastic, thank you!
posted by kitcat at 6:19 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

This might be covered at the linked site, but: toast, with sardines on to taste, don't be stingy with the oil, then: capers, crushed red pepper.
posted by working_objects at 6:55 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

Alton Brown's Sardine-Avocado Sandwich I've made it. It's good.
posted by Cyrano at 7:15 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Making note of this; I struggle to find quick, easy protein-focused-low-carb lunches to make and I keep ending up back at tinned sardines/herring/etc. One tin is the perfect size for lunch for me; a can of tuna or salmon is too much and requires figuring out storage or tossing out too much.

The thing is: when I see a tin of sardines, my first instinct is "ew, why would I eat that". This hails back to a very early memory I have of being offered them (as a hors d'oeuvre I think) as a small child, and a mix of the smell and the fact that it still looked like a mostly-intact animal was revolting to protoAzrael.

But -- when I do trick myself into eating them, they are delicious. I try to get packed-in-water (the kind in oil bother my stomach), and no extra flavors (no mustard or tomato sauce), just little tasty bones-and-all fish.

Eat them on crackers with cheese, break them up and mix them in ramen...but that's about all I've got in my recipe book, this link might expand that a bit. One of their recipes mention mixing with pickled red cabbage, and I may substitute sauerkraut instead, that really sounds good, all the savory at once.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:19 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

AzraelBrown, how do you feel about the Minnesotan snack of pickled herring on crackers? Jar of herring and a package of Saltines: yum!

It's a Scandinavian thing; I believe I got it from my Norwegian & German forebears.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:24 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Probably coincidentally, The Fishwife Cookbook was just released.
posted by box at 7:26 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I find sardines to be too 'clean' tasting. I wish they had a funkier flavor. I'm pretty fond of smoked oysters with mayo on crackers. Adding capers to sardines is definitely an improvement. Alton Brown's idea of vinegar and lemon zest makes a lot of sense.
posted by kitcat at 7:29 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

wenestvedt: I like pickled herring OK, but I think its flavor is a bit intense to make a meal out of...but I should rethink that, pickled herring is also one of those things that I made decisions about as a picky-eating kid that I should revisit. Pickled herring was a staple on holidays at my Swedish/Norwegian grandparents' house. A gourmet restaurant in Fargo had locally-sourced pickled herring as an appetizer which was really good.

I do have a box of saltines because, man, sometimes a saltine cracker is absolutely the best.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:32 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

There's a Mountain Goats song to accompany your tinned fish eating, whether legally acquired or not.

This is a top 25 Mountain Goats song, for me at least. Would encourage everyone to hear it once.
posted by kensington314 at 8:02 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I'm partial to Wei Long Little Fish, 卫龙小鱼, a flat foil and plastic package of dehydrated fish, with a little oil and chili. "Endless aftertastes". I find them inconvenient to eat any other way than right from the package in a single go.

You could alternate them with cream crackers or saltines, but it seems too hard to get them onto the cracker just to eat them.
posted by the Real Dan at 8:09 AM on February 26

I don't understand how a site like this could not have a puttanesca recipe? But it doesn't seem to.
posted by solotoro at 8:34 AM on February 26

There's a whole wine-and-tinned fish culture - conservas - going back more than 100 years in basque country and spain! Some of the best seafood you can get is in tins from these places. This is not some hipster novelty.

Get a baguette or crackers and take:

A well chosen manzanilla sherry with white anchovies, or
a light skin-contact white wine with some tuna belly,
some aged cava with some fish roe

to name three of dozens,

these are some of the most delicious pairings in gastronomy!

And for the tinned fish bar in the US..... a shoutout in downtown Los Angeles to Kippered.
posted by lalochezia at 8:38 AM on February 26 [4 favorites]

Pickled herring was a staple on holidays at my Swedish/Norwegian grandparents' house

Yes, pickled herring is the cornerstone of a good Lithuanian Christmas Eve dinner (called Kūčios).

One of the most memorable meals I ever had was a simple plate of pasta tossed with oil-packed sardines and nori crumbled on top.
posted by ikahime at 8:51 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

I'm more of a smoked herring person myself, but that or smoked trout with rice topped with balanchaung, maybe a salad if I am ambitious, is one of my goto low energy meals.
posted by tavella at 9:12 AM on February 26

Grateful that none of the recipes require fish coated in solder
posted by otherchaz at 9:16 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I am unimpressed with the anchovy spaghetti. You need to cook doughnuts in the oil first to get the right flavor - that's how my off-the-boat great-grandma did it for the Feast of Seven Fishes and it makes the difference every time.
posted by charred husk at 11:48 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

My SO and I once went to a Basque restaurant that turned out to serve pricy cans of fish and pricy wines. We considered feeling indignant, but ever since then, we've been able to buy inexpensive cans of delicious sardines and inexpensive Portuguese wine and recreate that meal very happily.
posted by acrasis at 4:07 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

This seems like the right audience Arlene Sardine, a picture book by Chris Raschka. You can even have a librarian read it to you.
posted by carrioncomfort at 8:33 AM on February 27

I spent a week alone in Alicante, Spain, about fifteen years ago. I was staying at this tiny hotel two blocks from the port. The hotel had a tiny cafe downstairs which had at the counter display local small fish and other small food (like between snacks and small lunch), like a tapas / tiny lunch buffet if that makes any sense. Some of the fish was tinned. The place was a hangout for some locals. I remember the tiny glasses of wine and the fish very well.
posted by fridgebuzz at 8:13 AM on February 28