Pioneering pescetarian chef Josh Niland acknowledges he has a tendency to harp on about this one thing, but he doesn’t mind. Why? Because it will absolutely ensure your fish cooks and tastes better.
“I sound like I’m beating the same drum everywhere I go,” he tells Broadsheet, “and I’m starting to feel like a politician. But don’t wash your fish. It’s as simple as that.”
His warning isn’t just for home cooks – it’s for everyone in the industry. “It’s the most ludicrously stupid thing to do to a fish,” the Saint Peter chef says.
Even though it comes from the ocean, the fin-to-gill expert argues that once a fish is out of water, its contact with the wet stuff (including ice) should be minimised. Every time a fish is put under the tap, while it may create an “allure of freshness”, it’s in fact having the opposite effect – it’s shortening the shelf life of the fish.
“The rapid nature of how water behaves on fish and the bacteria that it creates, that's what [washing produces].”
It’s also the main reason why a fish smells of ammonia, or what we commonly describe as that “fishy” smell. “The only way you get the smell of ammonia is through inconsistencies of cold-chain management,” he tells us. “If you throw a fish under a 12-degree tap then osmosis says the saltwater of that fish is going to all of a sudden become less salty, then all the cells within the fish are going to fill up with water. They’ll then break down and you’ll have a mushy fillet of fish that’s full of water.”
To emphasise his point, he likens the process to meat. He says a butcher would never cut off a sirloin and then wash it under the tap, so why should you do that with fish? “One would assume the shelf life of the sirloin in question would drastically shorten and an odour would eventually develop, creating, perhaps, something referred to as a ‘beefy beef’,” Niland wrote in his book, Take One Fish: The New School of Scale-to-Tail Cooking and Eating.
Niland says there are ways around this. The first is to find a reliable fishmonger that doesn’t wash their fish. And don’t be afraid to speak up. “You need to have a little bit of a voice if you’re going to commit and purchase something of stature that costs a decent amount of money; you want to have a voice in terms of how it gets done,” he says. “If you have the option to work with somebody that you trust, say, ‘Do you mind just giving me that fillet without washing it under a tap?’”
The other alternative is to use the drying method. “Put your fish on a wire rack and leave it in your fridge uncovered for at least three to four hours, or four to five hours if you can, and that will basically dry the skin out partially, so that at least when you're cooking – although the product is not where it should be – you’re still going to be able to get a crispy skin on the fish and it won't stick to the bottom of your pan when cooking.”
Looking for more cooking hacks? Our Kitchen Hacks series is filled with simple ideas to instantly improve your cooking.
If you want more cooking tips from Josh Niland, see his Eight Easy Tips for Storing Fish – And Why It’ll Result in Better Cooked Fish.
Here’s a recipe for his fried-bass-groper burger with tamarind hot sauce.
