Anchovies are the native dwellers of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. This saltwater fish mostly eat plankton and move along in large groups or schools.
Their length may vary from 1 to 4 inches and are smaller and slimmer than sardines. According to Dr. Joseph Mercola , anchovies contain impressive amounts of vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, and lots of nutrients. Often misunderstood for its intense flavor and smell, people refuse anchovies and deprive themselves of the health benefits. The fish promotes bone growth, assists tissue repair, and also helps in losing weight.
Anchovies are somehow nose-turners, but many chefs use it as a secret ingredient to enrich their flavors. This little fish packs in flavors such as sweet, sour, bitter, and salty, along with a fifth flavor known as Umami.
This fifth flavor provides multiple layers of savory taste to your dish and makes it more appealing. Anchovies have a characterized fishy taste and so comparing it with other foods will not be appropriate. Anchovy fish, also known as Handalla in Sri Lanka, has some similarities with the Worcestershire sauce and the Japanese Umeboshi paste. Mostly packaged in filets, anchovies have been a profitable product for many companies. According to Serious Eats , most anchovies filets score above 6.
They add an umami depth and robustness, without overt fishiness. However, when you see them in the supermarket they are more likely to be preserved than fresh. Salt-cured anchovy fillets packed in sunflower or olive oil are the cheapest and most readily available. They are sold in tall, thin resealable jars which is good if you only plan to use a few.
Horizontal ring-pull tins or cans are also available, but make sure you transfer what's left over to a sealed container and the fillets are submerged in oil, as storage in an open can will contaminate the taste.
Another way you can buy them is packed in salt. Whole salted anchovies are meatier, firmer and sweeter, but expect to spend around half an hour prepping them. They are usually left with their bones and fins intact so need filleting.
After scraping off excess salt and rinsing with water, an extra soak in either milk or white wine can help soften them. Store the anchovies you haven't touched in a glass jar in the fridge for up to six months. You can also get your hands on salt-packed varieties , which are minimally processed before packing—they've still got their bones and fins intact, which means that for most preparations, they need to be filleted and soaked in water or milk prior to use.
They also come in paste form, but we vastly prefer salt- or oil-packed anchovies to anchovy paste. And then there are the anchovies you're probably most familiar with, the ones that come in jars or cans and turn up in pizzas, pastas, sandwiches, and, um, my stomach.
Those are the anchovies we're talking about today—the kind that have been filleted, salt-cured, and stored in olive oil. It's that curing process that produces the intensely salty flavor and pungent, fishy odor commonly associated with anchovies. It's also what's responsible for breaking down the myosin in the fish—one of the muscle proteins that hold its flesh together—making it exceedingly easy to mash up and dissolve.
Some of us love that bold flavor and readily eat anchovies whole cough, me ; others shy away from it and only pop that lid when a recipe tells them to. Jar or can, cheap or expensive—which is the best and, more importantly, does it always matter? We decided to find out. We sampled eight common brands, several of which are available in both canned and jarred packages. We opted to test both types of packaging, landing us at a grand total of eleven different samples. Each contains just three ingredients: anchovies, salt, and olive oil.
They say you shouldn't cook with a bottle of wine that you wouldn't drink we'll grapple with the veracity of that statement some other time ; we wondered if the same concept would apply to anchovies. To make our evaluation as thorough as possible, we had tasters try each package in three different iterations: plain, in a Caesar salad dressing , and in a puttanesca sauce.
All ingredients were weighed out and prepared identically across all samples, with no variable in play aside from the anchovies themselves. Tasters were asked to evaluate the overall quality of the two preparations on a scale of one to ten. For the whole, plain anchovies, we asked for scores along three different axes—overall quality, saltiness, and texture more on this below.
Crackers and water were provided to help combat palate fatigue. Nonetheless—and I say this as an anchovy enthusiast—this was easily the most challenging taste test we've attempted in my tenure at Serious Eats.
In that spirit, I would like to pause here and ask that you join me in a moment of silence in honor of the intrepid and loyal tasting troops who sacrificed their palates in service of the greater good. Because yes, for those of you doing the math, that's 33 samples and 55 ratings.
If you're going to use anchovies for cooking, it doesn't matter what brand you use". One thing that rapidly became clear is that our tasters had some vastly different feelings about anchovies. The good news? If you're going to use anchovies for cooking, it doesn't matter what brand you use—our tasters couldn't distinguish between the puttanesca sauces or the Caesar dressings from sample to sample.
Never, ever planning to eat an anchovy in any other way? Feel free to grab your hat and head out the door. If, on the other hand, you intend to keep your fillets intact, do read on. This is where things start to get interesting and, admittedly, kind of confusing. First off, there was limited consensus in our group as to what constitutes a great anchovy.
I look for a fillet that's been, well, properly filleted, meaning not too many of those pesky little bones. Saltiness is inevitable, but if an anchovy has been excessively cured, it loses its meatiness and develops a metallic saltiness and grainy texture.
And when it comes to flavor, I look for a clean brininess that walks the line of fishy territory, without taking the plunge into what one taster described as, "The bottom of a chum bucket. Well, it turns out that not everyone agrees.
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