IQF silversides, DIY style

[DrKate]

I noticed that H2O Life is selling individually quick-frozen "silversides." While that is WAY more convenient than the block-frozen ones from SF Bay, the fact that H2O Life uses blue anchovies (which are very likely to contain thiaminase, as two other species of anchovies are on "The List") put me off. So I took matters into my own hands...

First I let the SF Bay flat thaw just a little, so I could start breaking off chunks of it. Then I let each chunk thaw until I could just separate all the fish. Then I sorted the fish by size (ones my boys can swallow now, ones they're not going to be able to swallow for a good long while...) and laid them out individually to re-freeze:
http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//500/medium/freezing.jpg

After re-freezing I vacuum sealed the sorted fish for storage:
http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//500/medium/vacuum.jpg

I figured the fact that the fish all got mostly thawed once and then re-frozen is still better than having to thaw the whole flat a little bit each time I wanted to break off some of the fish. And the size sorting means I now don't have to decide what to do with the occasional mondo fish that's way too big for my boys, even cut lengthwise.

Tangent: I found this little "exchange student" in the flat. He sure picked the wrong school to visit that day!
http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//500/medium/littlefish.jpg

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

I found two totally random fish in my SFB bag last week!!!

[drache]

yes - I found one of the same kind of other fish once in a pack - guess it happens

does anybody have an opinion on the re-freezing?
I've just been breaking of chunks and feeding them to different sizes of snakes

[mustang]

looks like a mud minnow on the bottom

[DrKate]

does anybody have an opinion on the re-freezing?
I've just been breaking of chunks and feeding them to different sizes of snakes
Yeah, I would do that but I've only got one size! :) The first time I broke a chunk off and thawed it, fed the smallest fish whole, fed the medium-size fish cut lengthwise, and the ones that were too big even for that ended up beheaded, gutted, and thrown into a test batch of salmon/halibut jello. But now I've got enough jello to last me a while so I wouldn't have anything to do with the biggest fish because they don't hold together very well when cut up.

The reason for not thawing and re-freezing meat or fish that I've seen in cookbooks is that it ruins the texture. I'm not sure my boys are connoisseurs enough to apreciate changes in the texture of their (whole) fish. It probably also degrades the nutritional content somewhat, which is why I was trying to minimize the number of freeze-thaw cycles by processing them all at once. (I dunno about you, but in order to break off a chunk to feed I had to let the whole flat get just a little mushy. Maybe if I'd hit it on the counter to shatter or something I could have broken it while frozen.) But I don't know that I've ever seen anything suggesting it's truly dangerous to re-freeze - unless you're leaving it thawed long enough to start to spoil.