SeaBear - Wild Alaskan Smoked Salmon - 6oz

This is the ideal product for lovers of hot-smoked salmon who do not live within easy reach of Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle (and that's most of us). I've always enjoyed hot-smoked salmon since the day I first tasted it. I regularly bought those smallish packs at supermarkets for something like $7-10 each. Then, on a visit to Seattle I tasted the "real thing". On later trips to Seattle I would stock up. Then circumstances kept me away from the Emerald City for some time; and I started looking for a replacement source: those supermarket packs weren't good enough any more. That's how I discovered SeaBear. Later, I discovered that Amazon sells SeaBear at an unbeatable price (except when SeaBear has a sale). Now I have a regular order placed with Amazon and they give me an extra 15% off from an already great price. I still recommend that you register with SeaBear to get notification of their specials and learn of some other products which Amazon doesn't stock. Unlike Amazon, SeaBear charges a flat $7.99 for delivery; so when you buy from them it's best to order big but seldom, as most products have enormous shelf life with no need for refrigeration. This product should not be confused with cold-smoked "lox-style" salmon.

This product sounded good from the description and the customer reviews however I didn't know what to expect once I received it. However, I must say that when they say you get a filet of salmon you get a filet of salmon, with the skin still on, and it has a wonderful, light smokey flavor reminiscent of a very high quality ham or smoked pork, yet of course with a nice, wild-caught fresh salmon flavor. The fish was perfectly cooked; meaning it flaked to the touch, was soft and tender to the palette almost like well prepared grilled or baked salmon. My family enjoyed the taste of this product and I will also note that it's not salty at all, just filled with lots of smoky, salmon flavor which makes it great on its own or to cook with. I used some of the salmon to make shrimp smoked salmon savory tarts which turned out beautiful and delicious! This salmon of course tastes wonderful on its own without any condiments! I recommend this product for anyone looking for good smoked salmon to cook with, give as a gift to someone special or to yourself if you are a smoked salmon connoisseur.

I've been trying to decide how this product is even sold as "smoked salmon." In my understanding, there is cold smoked salmon, aka lox, with a soft, slightly moist texture, and a smoky flavor. Then there is hot smoked salmon, which I thought I was going to get - and was so excited for as I had just returned from the Pike Place Market in Seattle and just fell in love with the flavor of wild-caught smoked salmon: slightly dry, smoky, intensely flavorful.This product is, for starters, WET. It even comes in a sealed pouch - like you can buy tuna in. And it is only vaguely smoky in flavor. Like, you gotta think hard about it. And the texture is, well, an awful lot like canned tuna. Most assuredly *not* like either hot OR cold smoked salmon.The pamphlet that came with this guarantees the "Fisherman's Oath" of doing "whatever it takes to make it right" if I am not absolutely thrilled with the product. For the price paid for a canned-tuna experience, I'll for sure be exploring that option. Really wishing I'd had a couple pounds shipped from the Pike Place Market at this point...

You may not get the variety of salmon that you think you are buying. It is also clear that there is some confusion about this product. I myself am annoyed at how much research it takes to understand the marketing of salmon. As you will see later in this review, much of this confusion could easily be avoided by simple changes to the labeling and advertising practices of SeaBear and Amazon...... But it's good stuff anyway.So, I ate 4 different SeaBear products in the past 6 months and received 3 more today, as well as my first from a competing brand (hopefully, I may be able to report on that one later). I also have ready access to fresh salmon and eat that too.And for the curious (like me), there is Wikipedia and the broader wealth of information on the internet. Thus, the info I gathered from my previous (consumed) orders, examining the packaging of the latest (un-consumed) orders, some background research, and some stuff learned from ordering experience, is probably worth passing on. If anything changes, I will update accordingly.HOT-SMOKED IT IS, THIS ISN'T COLD-SMOKED LOXFirstly, there are two main types of smoked salmon: Cold-Smoked and Hot-Smoked. Hot-smoked is actually fully cooked. I greatly prefer that over the cold-smoked type, which is essentially raw fish with some smoke on it.But many others prefer cold-smoked raw fish. Cold-smoked is often referred to as lox. For some reason, international airlines love to throw cold-smoked salmon into appetizers and salads. So if you've had salmon while airborne (other than as the main meal), it was probably cold-smoked.This SeaBear product on the other hand is hot-smoked fully-cooked salmon. Some of the people who expressed disappointment with this product were clearly thinking that they would receive the "not-really-cooked" cold-smoked salmon instead of this fully-cooked hot-smoked salmon.Hot-smoked salmon comes with juices in the package that are usually drizzled (by the consumer) over the salmon and folded, forked, or otherwise worked into the flakes of meat to moisten it further. How much juice to put on the fish (and work back in) is a personal preference. The salmon usually tastes perfectly fine as it is, but if lots of moisture is what you are after, then working the juice back is what you will want to do.SeaBear's hot-smoked products use a variation of a cooking method pioneered by the aboriginal peoples of the Northwestern region of North America: cooking over an alder wood fire. SeaBear's cooking method involves smoking the fish first, then they are put into foil pouches and hot-cooked fully in the pouch. This tends to impart a medium-strong flavor in all of their hot-smoked salmon products. The strength of the flavor can vary slightly depending on the variety of salmon used by SeaBear for the base ingredient. The smaller (and coincidentally cheaper) varieties of salmon have smaller fillets and flakes, and take on a slightly stronger flavor.It is fair to say that once you have tasted a SeaBear hot-smoked salmon product, then experimenting with another variety of SeaBear hot-smoked salmon product is merely a refinement. Each has it's own minor characteristics, but the overall SeaBear hot-smoked taste has it's own unmistakable signature that comes through regardless of the salmon species.WILD PACIFIC SALMON IT IS, NOT ATLANTIC FARMEDThis isn't Atlantic salmon, it is Pacific salmon.In an era long since faded into the history books, Atlantic salmon used to be primarily caught from the wild as a common food product. Unfortunately, the fishermen came pretty close to exterminating the Atlantic salmon as a species. They had plenty of help from land owners and other people who destroyed much of the Atlantic salmon's nursery habitat, back-filling and polluting critical breeding streams and rivers. Sadly, the wild Atlantic salmon never recovered.Thus, there is very little commercial wild Atlantic salmon available in the market. That isn't to say that there aren't any Atlantic salmon in the market though, because farmed Atlantic salmon are very popular and fill where wild Atlantic salmon products cannot. In my local markets, fresh farmed Atlantic salmon are plentiful.Wild Pacific salmon populations are under pressure, but are in significantly better condition than their wild Atlantic cousins. Let's be hopeful that controls are adequate to keep the breeding population of wild Pacific salmon going.Even with adequate controls to protect the breeding population, expect the price of wild Pacific salmon to rise in the future as an inconsistently controlled, and steadily growing, worldwide human population competes for the privilege of buying this delicacy.PREPARATIONBefore we get to preparing SeaBear salmon for the table, let's start off with a contrasting comparison to a different, more Continental way of preparing cooked salmon. We'll use farmed Atlantic salmon and add an East-meets-West twist.A friend of mine lightly spices fresh Atlantic salmon fillets with small amounts of garlic powder, onion powder, and a bit of very finely ground pepper. After a half hour of dwell time to let the spices soak into the surface, they are then briefly baked for a quarter hour, resulting in barely, but consistently cooked through, soft, flaky, moist salmon. Nowhere near overcooked, yet not raw anywhere either. The flavor and taste is so mild, creamy, and naturally well-oiled, that it can be easily forgiven if you close your eyes for a moment, and without any visual cues, find yourself wondering if you are actually eating tender shellfish drenched in butter.If there is anything to critique about fresh Atlantic salmon prepared this way, it is that they must be presented with only the mildest flavored of accompaniments. Otherwise the fine taste would be drowned out by the side dishes.The SeaBear wild Pacific hot-smoked salmon on the other hand is nowhere near as delicate. You can crank up the flavor on the side dishes and add a fair bit of spice to them without losing the taste of the salmon. You can get into cheeses, casseroles, and a fair bit saltier fare, and even more flavorful stuff without concern - the SeaBear salmon will hang right in there and still be tasty. The SeaBear salmon itself is fully flavored from the smoking process and needs no spices, although I do like to add a touch of very coarsely ground pepper for a bit of extra kick here and there.For the more gastronomically adventurous, don't get ridiculous and expect it to taste like beef jerky, jalapeno hot-sauced chicken wings, or an uncooked side of salted cod. It is a smooth, nicely smoked, fully-cooked, meaty, flaky, juicy, salmon. It has a medium-strong flavor, largely imparted by the alder wood that it is cooked with, combined with the natural strength of the Pacific salmon flavor. It tastes like fish... a very good fish.SeaBear hot-smoked salmon is super-easy to prepare: open the package, drain the juice (retain the juice if desired), then slide the salmon onto the presentation dish. Add juice, salt, pepper, and garnish as desired. It is vacuum packed and the shelf life is years.If I want to add some salmon to spark up scrambled eggs or another such dish, I reach for the leftover (if any) SeaBear hot-smoked Pacific salmon in the fridge. It would be futile to reach for the too finely flavored fresh-baked Atlantic salmon - the flavor wouldn't come through.SO MANY VARIETIES OF PACIFIC SALMON, WHICH ONE IS WHICH?There are five Northwest Pacific salmon varieties. All are available as commercially caught wild fish.- Chinook Salmon is the king of all Pacific salmons and is the largest, so it is often marketed as King Salmon. It has very large fillets and flakes, and the highest oil content. When smoked it takes on less smoke flavor and tastes milder. It is expensive. Surprisingly, several friends and I don't prefer it.- Sockeye Salmon is large, has large fillets and flakes, the reddest pink meat, and plenty of oil. Some folks I know prefer this one.- Coho Salmon is a middling variety that I have just gotten into the pantry and will try soon.- Keta Salmon is actually now a new marketing name for an old dog of a product. The name "Keta" derives from the second word of the scientific name Oncorhynchus Keta, but this salmon is really most commonly called Chum Salmon (because it was once commonly ground up for chum and bait when fishing for other species). Previously it was also commonly known as Dog Salmon (it was used to feed sled dogs). More recently it has also been marketed as Silverbrite Salmon, which is another ruse to tart up the marketability of the product (all salmon are bright silver during the sea-run phase of their life). Keta / Chum Salmon is a very large fish, and in spite of the marketing games with the name, I ordered this product expecting to get Keta Salmon, but got Pink Salmon instead.Pink Salmon is the smallest fish with the smallest fillets and smallest flakes... and it's cheap and plentiful. Pink Salmon has a not so stellar reputation as the runt of the litter, but properly cooked it is quite nice. SeaBear has a knack for it. Several friends and I tried a 3-Pack including Pink, Sockeye, and King Salmon - most preferred the Pink Salmon. This is mostly a testament to SeaBear's process, because Pink Salmon is usually the cheapest variety of Salmon.SO WHAT DID SEABEAR / AMAZON SHIP?Pink salmon, not Keta salmon.The photos showing the back of the package are correct, and correctly indicate that the currently shipping product is Pink Salmon.The detail of the Amazon listing says Keta salmon, but that isn't shipping anymore (I'm wondering how many of the negative reviews here were for the Keta Salmon version and how many were for the Pink Salmon version).WHAT TO BUY?If (like me) you aren't a very experienced salmon buyer, then it is worth knowing that the similarities between the SeaBear varieties of hot-smoked salmon are many, and the differences are few. Some have larger or smaller flakes of meat, more or less oil, etc. But, for the most part, novices often remark to me that the taste is largely the same between the salmon varieties. This is an assessment that I pretty much agree with (at least as far as the SeaBear hot-smoked King, Sockeye, and Pink Salmon go - I've yet to try the Coho and Keta porducts).So if you want to try it out, then I don't think it is at all wrong to buy the cheapest or most convenient readily available SeaBear hot-smoked salmon product. Only if you like the overall SeaBear hot-smoked salmon taste would I then recommend spending the big bucks to try the finer grades. Even then, like me and several of my friends, you may find yourself preferring a cheaper variety of salmon anyway. So I would recommend the very economical sampler 3-packs that let you try smaller portions of different varieties to try to find which you like best.I have some Coho in to try next, and I might yet try to get some Keta in to sample that too.CONCLUSIONFor the finest, lightest tasting salmon experiences, buy fresh if you can.For a stronger flavor and more pizzaz, I like the various SeaBear hot-smoked salmon products. They are a flavorful contrast to the mildness of fresh baked salmon. This Pink Salmon variety was one of my previous favorites. If I don't post back later saying otherwise, then it is fair to assume that I liked the latest batch just as much as the previous batches.Ohh... and yeah... it's much better than canned and flat packed Pink Salmon from BumbleBee. Smoother, less sharp tasting.