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PaperclipPerfector
4d ago
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What is your approach with regards to preparing raw fish for sushi at home? I've been tempted recently and have done some research, but it seems very difficult to find any relevant safety statistics for different preparation methods. For example, I THINK at this point (at least for salmon) the consensus seems to be that you want farmed Atlantic salmon that has been previously flash frozen at lower temps than a consumer freezer to kill parasites. However, a) it's hard to find out whether a salmon filet has been previously frozen, especially since amateur fishmongers seem to think 'fresh never frozen' sounds better even if they don't know/it's not true, b) I can't find any raw numbers about parasite infection risk from eating salmon this way at home, c) I can't find data about the risk from food poisoning eating this way, and to what extent curing for a short time might help with this. Also whether buying frozen or freezing at home has any significant effect or if it's just totally useless of it's not at low enough temp.
I'm probably going to just rip it with what knowledge I have and see what happens, but if you have any ideas they would be appreciated.
Serious Eats has a good rundown. My sense is that, practically, most of the fish that you're going to be able to buy through 'normie' channels has been "super frozen", regardless of how it's presented in the supermarket. When I've tried looking into how the major commercial operations work, it seems that most of them don't even bring their catch in for processing on land. They have processing facilities built into the ship (or some have multiple 'catching ships' that just operate near one big 'processing ship' that they can deliver to much faster than going back to a land-based facility), where they cut stuff up/freeze/can/whatever, all while still at sea. Again, there are no guarantees, but my bet is that you're probably surprisingly safer just buying something from the grocery store, banking on it having been previously super-frozen, than you would even if you went and caught a fish yourself and then had to figure out what to do with it. It is surprising and counterintuitive to me that this would be so, but it is what I think is probabilistically true, since the commercial operations are more scared of running afoul of regulation, so they're probably going to just super freeze everything.
Serious Eats has some other recommendations, but I think there's usually a caveat of whether you're dealing with tuna/farmed salmon vs. anything else, and I think you're basically safe if you're doing tuna/farmed salmon. I've heard in the past that you can do surprisingly low-temperature sous vide on salmon, not changing its texture much, and I've done this myself when I've made sushi. The FDA would call this "mild temperature processing", but the literature is pretty sparse; I just checked again, and it's one of those, "This seems to be a thing that people are doing, but we don't really have good studies to know whether it does anything in that temperature range." Oh well; I guess I maybe don't know if I'll do it again the next time. Maybe I'll still do it just so I don't get the side eye from my wife (she seems to be okay with the idea that it's still "cooking" it, similar to how we sous vide other things in ways that are much much more strongly supported by the literature), and I'll hope it doesn't actually slightly increase the risk of what I think is already a very small risk. Again on this point, the Serious Eats article looks at rates of problems in Japan, and basically concludes that the risk is tiny.
I just watched some videos of fish processing on ships again. It's really like any other part of our food production supply chain; if you look at it, it sort of makes you think, "How could this possibly be safe?" ...yet probabilistically, it pretty much is. Maybe someone with more time could try to estimate micromorts or something from eating sushi... but I have no idea how just making it at home with regular supermarket tuna/farmed salmon would compare to eating out at a random sushi restaurant. Literally no idea which would even be a relatively bigger risk.
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You'll be disappointed by my answer. I just cook the fish. I never really cared that much about the taste of raw fish. The texture is interesting, but I never could taste any subtleties. The thing I like most about sushi at home is the hot vinegared rice; salted cooked salmon or trout is good in it, and so is cooked chicken, and so are the other crap I like to add. Spicy mayo can taste good on the top or inside, unagi sauce can taste good on the top or inside, but usually I just dip each piece in some tamari soy sauce and have at it.
As for fish, yes, I have a sushi book that says flash frozen is best. I think freezing at all will kill parasites, so if you're paranoid, you can just freeze it yourself. Or just cook it.
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