Steelhead: A Study in Freshness

I've had quite a few entries about fish lately. I swear, I really do eat other proteins! But I have been eating lots of light, bright, springtime selections, and fish has worked so well with that program. So bear with me...chicken, beef, and pork are not in permanent exile.

But my latest fish story is about Steelhead Trout. A few weeks ago, I was lab-testing some trout recipes for a special event. I repeated my recipes with a wide variety of trout I found at my grocer's fish counter: rainbow, golden, and steelhead. In the end, I chose rainbow trout for the event because I thought it best accepted the seasonings for this particular recipe.

Nevertheless, I had been very excited to see steelhead at the grocery store. I really don't remember ever seeing it there before. While I am unsure of that particular grocer's source/purveyor, I was bolstered by the fact that I know steelhead definitely occurs locally. The grocery store steelhead that I had tested was fine, but it was MUCH stronger than the other varieties of trout that I tested. Not offensive, just strong. I thought it overpowered the light lemon-almond flavor profile I was going to be using, so I made a mental note that steelhead would be a good choice when I wanted to use a powerful sauce.

Barely a week later, mi esposo, a sport fisherman, called me to ask how I wanted him to wrap up and store the steelhead fillets he had just caught out on the Chagrin River that day. More trout! We had been eating a lot of fish and the busy Easter weekend was coming up, so I advised him to freeze his catch. It was the best option for our schedule.

Well, I thawed out his catch and we sampled his steelhead at dinner this evening. Despite the fact that we froze it, the best fish monger in town cannot hold a candle to what recently came fresh out of a local river. This steelhead was not the least bit strong. The flavor was so light and the texture was so buttery that I have a hard time imagining why all of these fisherman throw back their catches (that,I'm sure, is a discussion for another occasion). Really, though, our fresh steelhead had nothing in common with the grocery store stuff by the same name...nothing!

I am not going to stop eating grocery store fish entirely...I don't have the luxury, but I am going to look at this experience as a reminder that fresh really IS better. Everyone is spouting the rhetoric about "fresh and local" to a degree that if you surround yourself in food culture, the message can get lost in the tedium of repetition. But by God, it's NOT a lie. Please hit up a farmer's market, join a local farm-share, drive out to a country butchery, befriend a fisherman, plant some herbs in your kitchen window because the difference is night and day.