Which tinned fish should I buy, and how do I use it?

Tinned fish is not a compromise version of fresh. Sardines and anchovies are canned within hours of landing and improve for a year or two in the tin, which is not true of anything else in the cupboard. The gap between a good tin and a cheap one is large, and it is mostly visible on the label before you open anything.

Step by step

1. Read the packing medium first.Olive oil gives the best texture and the oil is usable — pour it over the toast or into the dressing. Sunflower oil is neutral and fine. Brine strips flavour and makes the fish salty. Spring water leaves it bland and slightly woolly, which is why water-packed tuna needs mayonnaise to be edible.
2. Read the ingredients list.Fish, olive oil, salt. That is a good tin. Added water, stabilisers, hydrolysed protein, flavourings or vegetable broth are markers of a cheaper product with less fish in it.
3. Keep sardines, mackerel and wild salmon as the workhorses.All three are cheap, sustainable, high in omega-3 and need no cooking. Sardines on toast with lemon and chilli, mackerel mashed into a pâté with crème fraîche and horseradish, wild red salmon into fishcakes or a salad.
4. Treat anchovies as seasoning, not as fish.Melted into hot oil at the start of a sauce, a stew or a lamb dish they dissolve entirely and leave savouriness rather than fishiness. Salt-packed anchovies rinsed of their salt are better than oil-packed if you can find them.
5. Buy tuna on the catch method, not the price.Pole-and-line or FAD-free skipjack is a very different product environmentally from unspecified purse-seine tuna, and it costs little more. Solid or steak tuna in oil eats far better than shredded tuna in water.
6. Eat the bones in salmon and sardines.Canning softens them completely. They are a substantial source of calcium and they mash invisibly into a fishcake or a pâté. Removing them removes most of the nutritional advantage over fresh.
7. Store tins properly and note what happens after opening.Unopened, a cool dark cupboard and years of life. Once open, tip the contents into a covered container rather than leaving it in the tin, and use within two days. Tinned fish improves with age in the tin; sardines are often turned by producers to redistribute the oil.

Tips

• The oil in a good tin of sardines is worth as much as the fish. Use it in the dressing, on the toast or to fry the onions for whatever the fish is going into.
• Tinned mackerel in tomato sauce is one of the cheapest complete meals in a supermarket and takes no cooking at all — onto toast, into rice, or stirred through pasta.
• A tin of anchovies keeps in the fridge for weeks once opened if you keep the fillets submerged in oil and top the oil up.
• Sprats, mussels, cockles and smoked oysters in tins are cheap, good and largely overlooked in Britain.
• If a tin is bulging, badly dented on a seam, or hisses or sprays on opening, throw it away without tasting it. That is the one genuine safety line with tinned food.

Common mistakes

• Buying tuna in spring water to save calories — The water leaches out flavour and dries the fish, so almost everyone then adds mayonnaise, which puts back several times the fat the oil would have contributed. Oil-packed tuna drained is better food and usually less fat overall.
• Draining away good olive oil — It has taken on the flavour of the fish and it is an ingredient. Draining it away and then adding fresh oil to the dish is throwing away the best part of what you bought.
• Leaving opened fish in the tin in the fridge — Once the tin is open the lining is exposed and the contents pick up a metallic edge. It is not dangerous, but it makes good fish taste cheap. Decant it.

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