How to Buy Pacific Salmon

There are three main categories of salmon you'll find when you're shopping for fresh salmon at your local fish market or grocery store. First, the salmon may be fresh wild salmon, caught by fisherman. Secondly, the salmon may be carefully cultivated in salmon farms. This is very common all over the world. But the Pacific Northwest is not one of the places you'll likely find farmed Salmon (farmed salmon is most commonly Atlantic salmon), and wild salmon fishing is very strictly regulated. Thirdly, both wild and farm salmon can be sold frozen, or may have been previously frozen (often while at sea) and then thawed by the market. All three are potentially edible salmon, but you need to know how to buy salmon, and why you might want to avoid farmed salmon. First, keep in mind the five types of Pacific Salmon, since the species affects the size, the flavor and the cost.

Salmon is generally sold in the form of fillets, steaks or whole salmon; each of these can be frozen, or fresh. When you're buying any sort of salmon, there should be no offensive odor. Fresh salmon smells like the sea, a bit like ozone, and not overly "fishy." If you wrinkle your nose, or notice anything that hints of ammonia, you do not want to buy that salmon.

Frozen salmon should look uniformly pink, without any gray or white areas, signs of freezer burn, or liquid in the package. The package should be completely air-tight. The salmon should be completely frozen, not partially thawed, and again, there shouldn't an odor of anything but a hint of the sea.

Fresh salmon fillets or steaks should be the same deep shade of pink all over (exclusive of skin, of course), and slightly translucent. The flesh should be firm to the touch, and spring back elastically when you press it. It should be tight, and there should be no discoloration on the edges, and no gaps or places where the muscle fibers have started to separate (a sign of stale, aging fish).

If you're buying whole salmon—and I envy you if you are—you want a mild, fresh sea aroma, firm, glossy bright skin, with no loose scaley patches, or discolorations, bright clear eyes, bright red gills, and firm light-pink to light rosy orange flesh that is elastic and slightly translucent.

Once you've found the perfect piece of salmon, if it's fresh, take it home and refrigerate it in the coldest part of your fridge—and be sure to eat it in the next day or two, at most. If you are freezing fresh salmon, leave some airspace in the wrapping closest to the salmon, and double-wrap it. Label the package with a description and date—and use it within two months. If you're storing still frozen commercially frozen salmon, label and date it and use it within eight months.

For more advice, see this article from Bon Appetit, or this post on handling fresh or frozen salmon.

Image credit: © BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons