Side by Sides: Sardines With and Without

It is at the beginning of spring that sardines appear on the Breton coast. We do not have our own fleet but we work with the Concarnois purse seiners in order to respect the freshness of the fish.

These sardines are covered with extra virgin olive oil, first cold pressing, renowned and recognized for its superior quality and for its dietetic virtues.

Ranked #85 on the worldbestfish.com Overall list.

115g tin

Pictured on short grain rice with wakame and furikake seasoning.

We’re big fans of sardine fillets. It’s not that we don’t care for skin and bones, we eat all that stuff. But you get a very different chew from a fillet than you get from a whole fish. It’s true of small whole mackerel as they compare to mackerel fillets and it’s true of sardines, as well. Neither is better or worse, those are quantitative evaluations. Each is different and has its own set of characteristics. We find they are better suited to any application where the meats will be fork-mashed, the finished product just looks better. And we like them for making one-bite presentations because you can really see that it’s a fillet.

I have tagged these as “Boneless & Skinless” but they’re only boneless. When I asked the producer about about how these differ from the boneless fillets, I was told, “The handmade boneless sardines are whole sardines without bones. So they are nicely presented in the can as whole sardines but when you return it [turn it over], they’re “cutted/opened”.

115g (4 oz) tin

Pictured on arugula with beet pickled onions and kale microgreens.

We’re big fans of sardine fillets. It’s not that we don’t care for skin and bones, we eat all that stuff. But you get a very different chew from a fillet than you get from a whole fish. It’s true of small whole mackerel as they compare to mackerel fillets and it’s true of sardines, as well. Neither is better or worse, those are quantitative evaluations. Each is different and has its own set of characteristics. We find they are better suited to any application where the meats will be fork-mashed, the finished product just looks better. And we like them for making one-bite presentations because you can really see that it’s a fillet.

I have tagged these as “Boneless & Skinless” but when I asked the producer about the skinless part I was told, “We can’t define it as skinless… The skin remains on the fillets but it is so delicate and thin that it doesn’t ’embarrassed’ the tasting.”

100g (3.5 oz) tin

Pictured on short grain rice with furikake seasoning.