Fish Expert Guesses Cheap vs Expensive Tinned Fish

I'm Charlotte Langley and I am a tinned fished expert.

[light music]

It doesn't slurp very well.

[bell ding]

We're talking tuna now.

This looks like Albacore tuna, specifically.

There are three species that we consume the most of

on a global scale.

Tuna and salmon are the top of the list and guess what?

Those are the cans that we eat the most of in North America.

So there is a large difference between A and B visually.

What I'm seeing here is completely two different worlds

of canned fish.

This to me looks very much like grocery store vibes.

It is one big chunk of meat that's been cut, maybe two

kind of put into the can, machine cut.

They've just chosen an oil, dumped it on top.

I'm not seeing any flecks of like salt or flavor

or herb or anything.

I'm getting this is our entry point of tuna into the market.

B is gonna be the one I'm more attracted to

because it looks like flower petals of tuna

have been arranged.

It could be the belly, so which is the ventresca cut,

which is very popular,

especially in Spanish and Portuguese in the region.

They're taking the best part of the tuna,

which is the belly part and putting that in smaller pieces

and canning it specifically on its own.

This is produced on a large scale,

large factories, large retorts,

less people hand cutting and making it artisanal and craft.

This is mass production.

B is beautiful.

B looks like little layers, little textures,

lots of little pockets hiding in there.

This is hand cut, this is handcrafted.

Also, the cans, again looking at the style of cans,

larger opening, better presentation, more engagement,

more surface area to see, means less cooking time

because the pieces are in there portioned out.

Starting with A,

oh, it's kind of hard to get outta the can,

which means it's been packed very tightly

and it's one big piece.

I'm breaking it up.

It's not breaking up on itself.

That's that one.

Going on to B.

Oh, okay, they're kind of connected.

This is definitely Albacore tuna.

You can kind of tell by the size of the flake.

This is interesting.

This is like all little flakes.

That pinky glow, that little rose glow is still in there.

It looks like a pile of rose petals.

I'm gonna start with A.

This is dry looking.

There's not a lot of oil in the can.

There's actually quite a light amount of oil,

which is interesting

because that means it would be less costly

to produce this as well.

Like they're not filling up the can with oil,

so they're using less ingredient.

I'm going to taste the smallest bite.

It's squeaky.

Is that dried?

I don't know if you can hear that.

It will lend itself well to moisturizing it

with lots of aioli or creme fresh or yogurt.

This is what we're used to getting.

This is the tuna that we all grew up with.

Moving on to B and I'm excited

because it's aesthetically quite pleasing.

It's been sitting in this lighter oil.

This looks like a neutral oil.

There's little flecks of color throughout it,

like the line.

It's so much better, oh my gosh.

And so much better flavor.

It's well seasoned.

This is great.

I think that this is more premium product.

If I'm wrong about this, I'll be absolutely devastated.

I'm not surprised at all.

But this is really accessible, right.

Like this is a product that you can try

and get and use regularly.

This one is more premium and you can tell why.

Shape, color, texture, flavor,

and it's just a great addition to switch it up.

I'm gonna guess we're going with trout today.

Darker color oils like an amber color like this one,

which looks like an olive oil.

This one suggests more quality on the oil itself.

This one here, thinner, lighter,

likely is a more neutral oil.

Something that's a little less expensive

for larger production or scale of production.

But looking at the two different cuts of fish,

we've got two different styles of portioning.

This looks like it was hand cut, hand canned,

hand packed with care.

This one feels a bit more machine cut,

the filets go through machine.

It is packed, when you weigh the cans,

it's like exactly 90 grams of protein is going inside.

That means that they'll add pieces

or like kind of rough it up

to make sure there's that exact weight.

This was designed for this can,

like it's stunning.

So this can has got two thin filets.

Oh, and it's very dark in color.

So this is very flaky,

much more delicate than the other can.

B is flaky, like it is overcooked.

Different time and temperatures apply differently

to different species.

This company or whoever made this tin

may have sort of like a set time and temperature

for all of their cans,

which means they're pumping out production,

they're making a lot of cans.

This one on the other hand, the texture of the filet

is really gorgeous.

The color is still there.

I still see pink.

This feels like the temperature may have been chosen

just for the species.

So I'm gonna go into a little piece of this.

This is high salinity,

which means there's like a brine

but it also has some sweetness to it.

It feels so much like at tuna, it's kind of funny,

which means to me that they've cooked it longer.

The oil is very light.

It's just like a sunflower or a canola or a safflower

or something really mild,

but there is quite a bit of seasoning on here.

If this has smoke in it, which I'm pretty sure that it does,

it is ridiculously light.

Like they just put a kiss of fake smoke in it.

Still very good.

I think I'm gonna like this one better.

So A, you can see the texture of the fish still in here.

Plus look how shiny the skin is.

This is gonna be good.

Oh my god, so different.

Great seasoning.

Surprisingly delicate.

It's bringing a moisture content

that I was not expecting from the skin in here.

It wasn't smoked for a very long time.

It's like you gotta a kiss of smoke

in the back of your palate.

This is packing great flavor

and I'm very pleased with its texture.

Like it is very soft.

But I wanna try that little tail piece,

which is still very good.

Higher on the seasoning

because smaller piece likely brine as well.

That's sort of a way to ensure consistency

in seasoning across all of your products.

Even if you're doing it by hand or by machine.

Highly recommend.

This is very good.

I think that letter A is the more premium

or more expensive product to purchase based on many things,

color, texture, mouth feel,

the quality of the smoke, and the presentation,

and the skin on as well I think is premium.

Well thank God I was right.

That seems like a great value

in my opinion for this.

Great starter, great flavor, great integrity of product.

Like as a chef, I'm like chefly kissing this one.

This one great for adding to a salad or a sandwich

to get going and adds great protein and nutrition

to your daily diet.

You know, if you wanna get it into your life,

why not try a lower cost one.

Mussels are great for a myriad of reasons.

Mussels also are ocean cleaners.

They filter feed through the oceans.

These are the most low impact food to grow.

They don't need to be fed, which makes them, in my opinion,

some of the most perfect food.

What I love about them in a tin,

they kind of just get better.

They take up more flavor, they take up more moisture.

So looking at the letter A,

this looks loaded with muscles

like they are coming out of the can.

Like there's so many in here.

The oil color is a nice rich color.

B on the side here it is also very full,

not as like orderly as I was maybe even expecting,

but even consistent size, which I like.

That means I wanna get more conformity

and more uniformity in the consumption

and the color of the oil is beautiful,

like a nice golden color kind of like matches the tin.

All right, I'm gonna start with letter A here

and get these on the plate.

What I love about this is not only is it the oil in the can,

there's also the liquor from the mussels.

So the mussel meat has this beautiful

sort of natural sauce that comes with it

and it's called the liquor.

So when you cook it, it extrudes like the sea water

that's inside of it and makes

a sort of like natural oceanic sauce.

It's gonna be salty like the sea.

You're gonna taste the merroir of North America

or wherever the can is from,

which is one of my favorite words to use.

There's the oil floating amongst the water,

which are the brighter the liquor,

which is I think quite pretty.

Moving on to B, the uniformity is nice,

very rich and unctuous.

The smell is wafting in my nostrils.

It smells super good.

This looks more of like a safflower

or a sunflower oil that's been working with the muscle meat

because the mussel are whole intact.

They're not cut up into pieces

so you're getting like the innards

and like all that good,

all the good juicy extras.

Similar color.

But I think this one is not smoked

and I think this one is very lightly smoked.

I also love how the subtlety of smoke is coming through.

It's not, I'm not being bombarded

with like really strong acrid smoke.

Uniformity in size of the species inside the mussel

inside of the can

is probably gonna say to you they spent more time in labor

grading their product.

So these are all the same.

This is all the same size.

I'm not seeing,

like maybe there's a couple that are a little bit larger

and maybe a little bit smaller,

but mostly overall this is the same,

which means they've graded the product

after the cooking or smoking process.

This one you're seeing some big guys,

some little guys,

like there's a big guy and a little guy right there.

Like these are two very different sized muscles

and that means that they probably batch cooked

and filled with a scoop or with another,

or maybe even by hand but paid less attention to the detail.

But they both look great.

The thing is I love muscles.

I eat muscles all the time and I want to try them.

I'm gonna start with letter A.

I'm gonna try a big one.

I'm gonna try a little one to see the comparison.

So let's start with the little one.

Super cute.

So good, so much flavor.

You get a little bit of irony

like a little like you're eating something

that's rich in iron

because they have all their organs inside of them still.

They're like super tender, which is great

because they handle the cooking process really well.

Like these are relatively plump.

The liquor comes through

so I'm not just getting like a nice oily mouthfeel.

It's actually quite juicy, which is surprising.

Anyway, I'm gonna move on to these guys.

But these have that nice little smoky note,

much smaller even across the board.

More oil coating like it's glistening.

This has been cooked longer because of the smoke.

They'll cook the liver like the tamale too long.

There's actually something in here.

Interesting, they're not cleaned.

They have their beards on them still.

When they take the meat out of the shell,

their doing it quickly

and they're leaving a little beard attached.

It's the part that attaches to where they are raised.

The liver has a bit of like a granular aftertaste,

so I'm tasting the smoke which is really nice.

The oil is luscious and gorgeous.

A's got like a juicier plumper sort of note

and the liquor that's coming out of it

is actually really pleasant.

It's adding to like oceanic flavor.

This feels more like I'm eating kind of

like fresh mussels in a sense.

I'm like ooh, tastes good, it's refreshing.

The mouth feels very nice.

The smoke is nice on B.

B is more expensive in my,

is my guess.

The perceived value for me

is that it's gonna be a more premium product

because the smoking and the extra steps.

This doesn't surprise me at all.

But I also love this

because this is a great introduction to eating tin muscles.

This is cost effective,

friendly to your pocketbook, and is delicious.

Premium crack this can for a holiday or a party.

I'm happy to hear that these are a very accessible way

to get tin fish into your life.

'cause this is delicious.

This is definitely octopus.

A and B look almost identical.

The can shape is the same.

How the cut in the can, the same,

the clearness of the oil, the same almost.

So this is gonna be the hardest one to discern.

These are very clean cuts.

So whoever was cutting this one

was like [ Charlotte makes cutting sounds]

like they know this product.

They know the species very well.

This one has a little bit of a muddier tone

or visual when it comes to the oil,

which may mean

that it started cooking to the point

where the membrane on the side of the octopus

started like maybe breaking down a little bit more

instead of mixing in with the oil

and creating a little bit of residue

in the bottom of the can.

But these are ridiculously similar.

Very neutral.

When you cook octopus in its own juices,

they may not have like cleaned the octopus as well,

like they may not have like wiped off the tentacles as well.

So I'm getting like that dirty river water,

like it's got a bit of muddiness.

This one, almost no scent at all.

All right, we are starting with column A,

the gold can of octopus.

I'm just gonna get it all on this plate.

I see some coloring from the coloring

of the outside of the actual skin itself.

Looks pretty good actually

And then can B.

Interesting, interesting.

They're almost exactly the same.

The color on this one is a little bit more of a blush,

which is nice.

It's a bit of a cleaner color.

And A, it's a little bit muddier, a little bit cloudier

with the liquid that has come off of the octopus,

which could also mean that the can is aged a little bit

that it's been sitting for a while.

I have to check the age and the stage of this can

'cause if it's a bit older

it means that it's spent some time with itself

and has changed and evolved

versus this one.

This has probably been canned very recently,

but a lot of tin fish ages really, really well

and actually increases in deliciousness,

moisture texture over time.

They're so similar that I think the only thing

that's going to be able to differentiate these two

is how they taste.

Okay, so we're gonna start with A.

I think I'm gonna go with a larger piece first

and then maybe try the tentacle.

Slimy.

And very salty.

Out of all the tins I've had today,

this one is the most seasoned.

Octopus has natural oceanic salinity quality of its own

and it is so porous and has so much moisture content in it

that it holds onto more liquid.

Weirdly almost tastes like there's like a bit

of a soy sauce moment happening.

Like it tastes aged.

It's very tender with a bit of chew,

which is to be expected.

I think I'm just gonna go right to this one

'cause I'm hoping for this to be super bright.

The smell is a little bit stronger like aroma.

It has that soy sauce flavor as well.

It's like a salinity, it's not soy sauce in these.

I know that, but it has that like umami funk a little bit.

Also salty, not as salty as this one.

Could be the exact same recipe.

One pressing plant or cannery

will can for two different people and make the same product.

They just have different packages on them.

That's hard to tell.

But I'm gonna eat this little guy here, see what happens.

It doesn't slurp very well.

It's softer.

The oil is nicer in this.

They have a neutral oil.

This is letting the flavor of the octopus

really come through.

It feels sort of like chicken.

This feels more high quality,

but it could just be the timing.

I think B is gonna be a bit more expensive.

They're so similar, it's ridiculous.

You gotta be kidding me.

[laughing]

4.43 an ounce versus one 1.12.

What this is telling me though

is that they make more of this.

They're more experienced with it,

but they're charging less for whatever reason.

It could be the brand that separates this apart.

You know, this could be

where the packaging that we don't see here

sort of steps in and you're paying for the packaging.

I'm thinking though like maybe because it has been aged

that the value is increasing over time.

They release them over a later period of time.

So they're aging them for flavor for the consumer

or they wanna do a seasonal release or something like that.

So they're only launching small batches at a time.

It's probably a small batch.

These look like sardines to me.

Sardines have like hit the market

and have become so like sexy

for consumers in the last couple of years

and they're harvested

and caught, cut, cooked, canned, processed daily.

This is like a very quick turnaround species.

It doesn't get brined for very long.

It doesn't get smoked for very long.

It comes in the front door

and is processed and canned right away.

So it's canned at the peak of its freshness,

which I think is very unique to sardines

and maybe that's why people like them a lot.

It's more like a fresh fish in a can,

for lack of a better word.

I'm observing a few different things here.

Number one, the shape of the can.

This is a round can.

This is a rectangular can.

The shape of the can impacts the nutritional value

of the product and the flavor and quality

and integrity of texture of the species.

To cook the can, it goes through TDT,

which is the thermal death time,

which kills like all the [beep] bacteria,

and then it has the heat penetration.

So how fast does the heat penetrate inside of the can

to get to that safe temperature?

So a thinner more round can like this,

it's gonna take less time for the heat to get inside.

This can a bit taller, a bit chunkier, a little bit fatter,

it's gonna take longer for that heat penetration

to get into the middle.

As in you're losing some of the nutritional qualities

and it's also gonna have to cook longer.

So the integrity of the species itself

will also maybe be reduced a little bit.

This looks like they have no skin on,

which to me I'm going, why would they do that?

That is so much extra work.

Labor, dollars.

This one, it's dark, it's rich.

The oils are like robust.

The smell is great.

No head on either.

The skin is on and I'm gonna actually guess

looking at A,

that they may have taken the bones out of this one as well.

This one also looks like there is some additional cooking

as in maybe a grill mark or a sear

or something like that, which I can't really tell yet.

These sardines are nicely packed and in a row.

They're sort of consistent in design.

They've been laid in thoughtfully.

It feels more that it's a handcrafted can.

Someone was like whoop, whoop,

all these little nonas like packing them together.

This one is likely definitely packed by hand as well,

but it was packed more roughly

like they're like, let's get these fish in,

let's make sure they fit.

As long as the size is good, that's fine.

Interesting, they fileted these.

So these are all single filets, which is,

this is saying to me machine cut

because they're cut kind of sloppily.

Oh I haven't seen this in a while.

They added in a layer of parchment.

You're sort of keeping that moisture retained inside.

So then you have the other filets underneath

that are face up.

And then I'm gonna do the oil because I wanna see the oil.

B, this nice little rectangular can going in.

These are gorgeous.

They're giant, they're shiny.

Three big whole sardines

versus maybe four or five cuts in half.

I'm looking at these two going very pale in color.

The aroma, very mild.

Neutral reaction.

This one on the other hand, beautiful, gorgeous,

shiny silver skin.

A few little peaks of like the silver,

like sort of flashing on the back.

The marks aren't from grilling them,

they are from the racks inside of the cooker,

in the steamer before they go into can.

These have been steamed and cooked first and then canned.

So cooked twice.

Very normal procedure.

But these are beautiful.

The spines are in,

the fish are really thick and plump.

The filets look really nice.

When you chew, it like kind of sticks

in between your teeth a little bit.

Maybe that's not a really romantic way to describe it,

but that's what I'm experiencing,

which means it's dryish, mild, low seasoning,

not a lot of salt at all,

but I'm not getting a big bold sardine flavor.

The bones are out.

A machine definitely did that.

And also skinned these guys as well.

This is cooked till it became a little dull.

So I'm gonna flip over to this guy.

This feels valuable looking at it,

like this is fish in a can.

This has been caught from the sea, caught fresh.

So good.

This tastes like the sea.

The oil is so rich, it's really nice, fatty mouth feel.

Umami level, very high.

I know some of the ladies that do the canning process

of the cleaning.

They're really good at scaling a fish.

This one feels like a bit of a rush job.

Less attention to detail means less costly

in labor and production.

So yes, this could definitely be a lower value sardine

in the can based on how it's been setup,

assembled and cleaned.

I think B is more expensive

because of the hand cut, the hand packing,

more made by craft, by these nonas.

This one feels more machine cut,

but I could be wrong.

No way.

I'm a little bit aghast actually.

A is actually a little bit more expensive

and by a little bit, I mean a lot a bit more expensive

than this one.

And why I think that is,

is because of how much labor has gone

into the can for processing.

These have barely been touched.

This has been cleaned, gutted, brined, portioned,

skinned, bones are taken out, the side bones are taken out.

I'm already exhausted talking

about how much labor went into this can.

That being said, I like this one.

There's been like this thing about tin fish

and tin food in general for a long time.

That it is lower quality, not as delicious,

not as nutritious, not as interesting,

and I completely disagree with that.

My takeaway is that there is so much variety in tin fish,

whether it comes from a species, the sourcing, the sauces,

the vinegarette, the toppings, the the packaging.

All of these three things I think are showing me

and others I hope, that tin fish is a way

for you to sort of explore new opportunities in the kitchen

at home and with friends.

I think it's a no brainer personally.