Living in the Fingerlakes area "seafood" of any kind--even farm raised can be expensive where I live & defrosted for the groc store counters or sold frozen-- saving grace and inexpensive is the large variety of tasty fish in our lakes & streams-- just down the road about 3/4 mile is a good steam --rainbow & brook trout. The lakes supply blue gills, large & small mouth bass, walleye (a personal favorite), lake perch ( which is so tasty caught thru the ice )-- the barge canal supplies catfish-- and fresh water eels. All cheap but you have to clean yourself.

Like Diane, I have access to lots of lake fish, although seafood is very expensive and not particularly good, usually. Frozen is the only way I get things like scallops or tuna.

I actually like some of the cheaper options, having grown up on them. My all time favorite fish is lake perch, although it runs over $10 a pound here now, unless you have a fisher-person in the family. I also greatly enjoy walleye, which is no less expensive unless you catch it yourself. We get Lake Michigan Salmon, very yummy, along with the bass, blue gills, pike, catfish, etc., and we do clean it ourselves much of the time, LOL.

I also do not overlook things like frog legs, which can be had for much less than scallops or lobster. I like canned mackerel, having grown up on the stuff, made into fish patties. Clams and mussels are a less expensive alternative to oysters, usually.

I often make chowder to "stretch" a piece of fish, like this recipe from Midwest Living. I've made it using leftover salmon and using canned salmon, both are good, although not as good as the fresh stuff. In the spring, when asparagus is less than $1 a pound locally, this is particularly good. Other times I can used frozen asparagus, and I always use milk, never cream because, well, I always have milk on hand, but not usually cream, LOL.

I saw your daughter's sushi, I think that's a very good way to "stretch" expensive fish and it looked delicious, she did a very nice job.

Great Lakes Salmon Chowder
•Makes: 8 servings
•Yield: 11 cups

•1 pound fresh skinless salmon fillets or one 15-ounce can salmon, rinsed, drained, flaked and skin and bones removed

•1 1/2 cups water

• 3-1/2 cups vegetable stock

•2 cups frozen whole small onions or 1/2 cup frozen chopped onion

•3 medium red-skinned potatoes, cubed (2-1/2 cups)

•1 tablespoon snipped fresh dill or 1/2 teaspoon dried dillweed

•1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel

•1/2 teaspoon salt

•1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

•2 1/2 cups whole milk, half-and-half or light cream

•2 tablespoons cornstarch

•1 10 - ounce package frozen cut asparagus, thawed and well-drained or 2 cups cut-up fresh trimmed asparagus

• Fresh dill sprigs (optional)

Directions
1.Rinse fresh salmon; pat dry. To poach fresh salmon, in a large skillet, bring water to boiling. Add salmon. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 6 to 8 minutes or until the salmon flakes easily with a fork. Remove salmon from skillet, discarding poaching liquid. Flake salmon into 1/2-inch pieces; set aside.
2.Meanwhile, in a 4-quart Dutch oven, combine vegetable broth, onions, potatoes, snipped fresh dill, lemon peel, salt and black pepper. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally.
3.In a large screw-top jar, combine milk and cornstarch. Cover and shake well; stir into soup. Stir in asparagus. Cook and stir until slightly thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir for 2 minutes more. Gently stir in poached salmon or canned salmon; heat through. If you like, garnish with fresh dill sprigs. Makes 8 main-dish servings (11 cups).

Annie

The Japanese market that I go to has several types of sushi grade Ahi tuna, depending on where it was caught. The cheapest is about $26 a pound, but I avoid that and buy the better tuna that is $36 to $44 a pound, and it is worth it. I only buy about 1/3 to1/2 pound for the two of us, and so it does not amount to that much. If I had children to feed, I would buy the cheaper sushi, however, and might fore-go it altogether. Good sushi is going to be expensive, and so we only buy it once or twice a month. You can sometimes find great deals on King Crab Legs, however.

For a cheaper fish with a really good flavor, look for Opah, which I believe is from Hawaii. It has a flavor/texture that is somewhat like a cross between swordfish and salmon and is very good grilled. In general, I cook it the way I would swordfish, but it has a richer flavor than swordfish. It is not quite flavorful enough to substitute for salmon, however, except in some dishes.

I have found that if you get a whole very fresh salmon, you can cut it into two pound pieces, wrap in freezer paper, and then seal it in a Foodsaver bag and store it in the freezer. Since you can get a lot of salmon at a good price in season, this is the best way to store it for future use. I do not like buying previously frozen salmon in the market, but if I freeze and defrost it myself, I am perfectly happy with it. It might be better if the store sells it frozen and not defrosted.

Lars

Fishcakes.
Equal volume cooked salmon and cooked tatoes, crushed. Add some mayo, chopped gherkins and capers, herbs and seasoning.
We're lucky here being on the coast there's always something on special and it pays to eat fish seasonally like other things.

Fish is expensive because our fish eating habits can be very wasteful; we only eat mostly filleted fish. Yes, I understand all the other parts of fish can be made into cat food.

I buy the whole salmon, $3.99 a lb. There are many recipes for fish heads. I enjoy salmon skin “cracklins.”

Chilean sea bass is great, $30.00 a lb, but there are plenty of other fish at around $2.00 a lb. All fish are tasty, it’s all about recipes. You can buy live swimming fish in a Korean or Chinese store at around $3.00 a lb. Live fish is more tasty than $30.00-a-lb Chilean sea bass.

I know others have strong feelings about this, but it does not bother me to buy almost dead or very recently dead crabs and lobsters. $2.50 a lb vs. $9.99 a lb. They taste no different than live ones. To me, 99% of other sea foods you buy are dead sea foods anyway.

Do you think restaurants throw away their recently dead lobsters?

Do you think those precooked lobsters in stores are all cooked live?

I also buy crippled live lobsters and crabs. Those are fully lively lobsters and crabs with one leg or one claw missing. Those are usually at ½ price.

Sushi fish is the only fish I pay high price for.

dcarch

I buy whole salmon and fillet them at home. If you're precise, you lose less than 20% by weight (head, gills, skeleton, fins, tail) which makes the price/lb much lower than if buying the fillets alone. I think the resulting fillets are fresher than ones that were cut that morning and have been sitting in the grocers' case for many hours. Like dcarch, I use the skin (I fry them into crispy salty ribbons, make nice salad topping). The collar is tasty broiled with teriyaki sauce, and I suppose one could freeze the heads and bones until its time to make a fish stock, or use them in the garden.

I use a lot of tilapia and catfish. Also low on the food chain, and I heard an oceanographer on NPR talk about that once. Better to eat catfish and tilapia than swordfish, she said.

I don't like tilapia or swai that well, but as far as less expensive and low on the food chain fish go, I like cod, trout, salmon, and mackerel. Mackerel especially is fun, they are built like mini tuna and when you're cutting one up you can pretend to be at Tsukiji, wielding a six foot blade over a $30,000 tuna.

This weekend I will head to the Asian market and see if I can show what interesting and affordable fish they have.

What is your location? Are you land-locked? Fresh seafood can be a challenge even if you live coastal. Takes a bit of Sherlock hunting. And research. I bet someone in your area has it all figured out. Be it on-line ordering or getting to know your local fish monger by name.
When i moved to this home 7yrs ago, i relied on my past city life connections for everything. Went a bit out of my way but it worked fine. We still work in the city but it was becoming a challenge to hit our old markets regularly. Took an embarrassing long time, a few years, to find local relationships.
If shrimp has a good price, ask to purchase a frozen block...they have it in the freezer. Why buy thawed shrimp? Buy a frozen block. You can later break off a dozen here and there for a meal. Comes to them in a 5lb block and where it is from is on the box. Unless you meet the boat on the dock that caught shrimp close off shore, all shrimp is frozen.
Sushi grade is expensive and worth it if you want to make it. You could also make kappa and other ones like avocado, carrot, rice vermicelli, bean sprouts... veg rolls. Kappa is cucumber. A small package of smoked salmon makes a good sushi roll w/ a veg. A good way to practice as well. Just a way to have a nice meal but stretch it full of healthy veg but buy a smaller portion of the expensive tuna.
-For a bridesmaid party i made veggie spring roll with rice wrappers, but made smoked salmon with the usual nori wrappers. And some with just one wild caught salmon frozen single serving and simmered with herbs, forked with herbs and yogurt, then rolled. All was cooked (or smoked) but perfect for a party. Nothing raw and mostly veggies.

I don't buy fish in tanks, (ick, how long have they been there), or fish laying out on ice unless i know where it comes from. Get to know your fish monger and ask questions. If they are indifferent or do not know, find one that does. That is key to good fish and getting fresh. A good supplier will be happy to see you. I had to laugh when a few dozen whole fresh cod came in. Beauty fillets, a good price, but i just asked for the head and frame for stock. I catch and salt my own and have a freezer full but it still excites me to see a fresh cod in my local market.
(wish i had a freezer full of salmon)

Just spent the weekend with my brother who is land-locked in Idaho. He does have trouble with seafood during the winter. I do send him my thick and lovely salt cod, but locally he does have trouble with high cost. He does have a coop for good organic beef ordered and shared by a group. And thinks he must seek out a similar seafood co-op group.

If you can find nice thick fillets of salt cod at your local italian market or international store, i have a dozen dishes for it. Remember that one lb salt cod is near two pounds soaked. At 9 dollars a lb in NY, it is 5 a lb once reconstituted. Look for Canadian salt cod for the best product.

I'm in Oregon, Portland to be precise. Not landlocked, but that doesn't stop halibut from being $20/lb . . .

My strategy John, which I realize may not work for you, is to sweet talk the nearest fishermen! But it's not all talk, I am happy to trade them for my home canned and baked goods.

Now . . . (she gets up on her soapbox) . . . Now you know one of the main reasons I became a biologist/conservationist and have specialized in aquatic ecology--I love to eat fish and other seafood!! And at the rate we are degrading our aquatic environment I wouldn't count on the situation getting any better in the future. For example, there was a thriving and vibrant East cost Atlantic fishery that is pretty much fished out or polluted out of business. Sure, I can get wild caught Atlantic salmon very cheaply but I know way too much about it to buy and eat it. Same with East coast haddock. And then there is cod, and the list goes on and on. And we keep inching down the food chain to fish that was once considered a trash fish, like pollock, and still we will probably overfish that some day. There are few things that illustrate the folly of human nature's preoccupation with immediate gratification than commercial fishing. They used to pull sturgeon by the thousands out of the Great Lakes, and I heard they were great eating too, along with being a source of native caviar. Same with grayling, a fish for which a lovely town in Michigan was named, and now no longer exists in the state. I have heard they were great eating too. Also long gone are the jobs in the fishing and canning industries in these communities.

There will come a day when humans won't miss or bemoan the costs of the fish we eat today, because they too will be gone. So eat up folks, enjoy it while you can! That's my strategy, along with dedicating my life to aquatic conservation. So far neither strategy has been very successful, because I don't make enough money as a biology teacher to afford to eat good fish very often!

"There will come a day when humans won't miss or bemoan the costs of the fish we eat today, because they too will be gone."

That's when we start exchanging recipes for long pig . . .

""There will come a day when humans won't miss or bemoan the costs of the fish we eat today, because they too will be gone."

Or, with global warming, ocean level rising, there will be a lot less land and a lot more ocean.

Few people, more fish.

dcarch

More jellyfish, anyway. Are they good to eat?

I doubt there will be less people in the future. We won't see huge swaths of land covered by sea in the foreseeable future either, that's just someone in an office playing with computer graphics. Climate change is not one big thing, it is a million little things. Most environmental problems are death by a thousand cuts. I would bet on there being less available land that is easy and inexpensive to live off of. This is happening right now. And there will be plenty of "fish" to eat too, just probably not the high-on-the-food-chain, fish-that-eat-other-fish, stuff we can get now. If I were an investor I would take a good long hard look at aquaculture. The predicted collapse of world fisheries is not news. Meanwhile, Iike I said, eat up while you can! Don't mean to hijack a thread that is about how to find the best prices right now, not what the future might be like. I am lucky to have a great fishmonger right near my home, but that doesn't necessarily translate into great prices, just good fish. I definitely think an alliance between consumers and purveyors of fish, along with fishermen, could make some real policy changing noise if they were so inclined though. I know some chefs are speaking out on the issues. But anyway, there are always naysayers so no use going on about it. Food for me though, is the ultimate environmental issue. I lead with my stomach!

Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, I won't eat any fish or seafood from the Pacific. Never mind paying $20/lb.+ for it.

Every once in a while, we splurge and get some Maine lobsters or PEI mussels. Lobsters have been rather inexpensive this year ($5.99/lb. on sale) which is cheaper than most of the lunch meat at the local deli. Plus we get some great lobster stock for the freezer.

We still eat fish about once a week, but we catch it ourselves. We love bass and pickerel, and are always looking for new ways to prepare it. Delicious and you can't beat the price :-)

Fish is a bi-product of sorts from our boating hobby. We eat fish more than land critters since essentially it's free.

DH does pay a hundred bucks/year for a recreational lobster permit but that breaks down to a couple pennies/pound at season's end.

Once a year, DH and a couple buddies do an extended several day offshore tuna fishing trip. Our boat is not set up for tuna fishing so they go in David's boat and the other two pitch in for fuel. Fuel costs in the $1,000-$1,200 range for the trip plus the tuna permit. Any catch is split between the guys. They almost always come home with at least one tuna. Since they would have the boats regardless - we don't include it either in our grocery costs plus it's really good bonding time for the guys (3-4 days alone together at sea).

I've always got a freezer full of cod, tuna, summer fluke (flounder), lobster, and stock fixings because those are our favorites.

We get dry diver scallops from the "honor system" box on the dock. The charge is $15/lb. They're available 24/7 so scallops are a short notice quick meal. We dig our own clams. Crab we usually buy from a young child walking around the marina earning money for his piggy bank.

We do not eat swordfish and limit salmon although we do eat it once every couple months.

So, how to eat seafood on a budget? Well, you could take up offshore boating as a family hobby! It's fun and is an activity the whole family enjoys. Gets everybody away from the electronics (except for what's on the helm), see new sights, learn about conservation, teaches personal responsibility, and new skills plus it's a lot of fun. (grin)

/tricia

Alas I think the required hole in the water into which one pours money is the budgetary problem . . .

Stopped by the little Asian grocery and bought a mackerel. These are $2.70/lb which yields about $4.30/lb when cut up. So reasonably budget, and very pretty.

I decided that monochrome suited the dissecting room images. I'll post pics of the cooked dish in a sec.

Arrgh, the battery on the "nice camera" died so I can't upload the pretty shots. Here is an iPhone snap for now.

To cook - I mix a neutral oil, soy sauce, salt and sugar into a sort of slurry, then spoon that over the flesh side of the fish. Heat a cast iron pan to quite hot, add some oil, and fry the fillets skin side down for about two minutes or until the skin is crisp. Then carefully turn and cook on the flesh side for about 30 seconds. Hopefully not mangling the crisp skin as I did here.

John, boating is not as expensive as you might be imagining. I know people who spend as much on hobbies such as skiing or golf that are as costly.

If you purchase an offshore boat and need financing - it's not like buying a car with a Note and UCC. You get a mortgage secured by the boat and it can be amortized over 20 years. The boat is also tax deductible as a SECOND HOME. To qualify as a second home you must have sleeping, a head, and cooking facilities and an offshore boat will have those easily. We own our slip so that is also tax deductible - same as your home real estate taxes. Our boat is registered through Homeland Security so there are no annual State taxes or license fees. They are, in essence, a waterfront condo but much cheaper than that condo. :)

/tricia

John, in Michigan there are no tax advantages to owning a boat, they are never considered a "second home" and they are quite expensive to license, insure, store and operate, and that's before maintenance and fuel. I'm assuming it's the same way in your state.

We fish, but don't have a boat, Elery says the two best days in a boat owners life is the day you buy it and the day you sell it, LOL. We will probably, at some point, buy a small river type boat with a motor, something small enough that he and I can get it on and off a trailer by ourselves. My county contains more than 230 natural lakes and the combined total of all the rivers and streams is more than 350 miles and Michigan has 3,126 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, so anything that gets done on the water is a pretty natural thing here.

We fish the river for salmon, using hip waders, trout can be caught the same way. There are piers and docks (or the ice!) for "pan fish" like sunfish and bluegill and perch and small river or lake boats can be rented by the day. I even know people who use canoes, pontoon boats, paddle boats, even inflatables on the local lakes, although I think fishing from a canoe would be an interesting time.

So, no lobster or cod or halibut or tuna, but we catch plenty of walleye, perch, bass, pike, various panfish and an occasional salmon without a boat, plus catch crawfish, trap turtles and gig frogs.

I wish I liked tilapia, but I don't. I understand you can actually raise those in an above ground swimming pool.

Annie

Annie,

Our boat qualifies as a second home under Federal Tax law - what state you live in has nothing to do with it.

/tricia