Since I work around food, I occasionally encounter some strange bit of information that's new to me, or realize that there are common misconceptions about certain food related things. That being the case, I thought it might be interesting to do another round up of "True or False" ideas about food.
5. Fresh salmon smells like watermelon. This was a new one to me, but I've heard a handful of customers claim that really fresh salmon should smell like watermelon. Frankly, that sounded nuts to me, since, fish being fish, I'd expect it to smell kind of...fishy. So what's the answer, does fresh salmon smell like a sweet melon? Myth or fact? My research leads me to believe:
Fact!
I was gobsmacked when my store ordered some fresh sockeye salmon one week, and when I gave the delivery a quick sniff for freshness, I was amazed to find it smelled just like a fresh cut watermelon. At first, I thought some elaborate and weird joke was being played on me, and then I remembered a few customers over the years insisting that salmon should smell like watermelon. It's crazy, but true in some cases. Now, most of the time I have found that good salmon just doesn't have a strong odor at all, at least not a fishy one, but according to many people and confirmed by that one personal experience, it CAN smell like a watermelon. Pretty cool.
4. Farm raised salmon has pink or red meat naturally. That's one thing almost everyone knows about salmon. It's the big fish that has vivid pink or red meat. I certainly have never seen a side of salmon that wasn't at least a light pink color, and some get a deep hue that's nearly red. I have not noticed that intensity of meat color is particularly different in farm raised or wild caught salmon. So this is just an inherent color trait with all salmon right?
Wrong.
Wild salmon gets its pink color from the creatures it eats (primarily shrimp and krill), but the farm raised ones don't have that diet. They get their appealing coloration from the chemicals canthaxanthin and astaxanthin, which both occur in nature and aren't harmful, but without which farmed salmon would have grey meat, something not appealing to most consumers. Frankly, since the colorization of farm raised salmon is artificially induced, I'd love to see the scientists behind that get creative and create purple or blue salmon. But seriously, I'll just spend a few extra bucks and buy the wild caught stuff.