Scale to Tail: The Whole Fish with Josh Niland — WildFed Podcast #105

WildFed Podcast — Hunt Fish Forage Food

Our guest today — Josh Niland — is changing the way the culinary world thinks about fish. From the way we handle it, to how we store it, to the way it’s cooked, Josh has single handedly created a new school of fish cuisine. Though part of it is a strong ethic of using more of the animal, that’s really just the beginning.

Imagine, at present, in restaurants and at home, only about 45% of a fish is utilized for food. Now imagine a James Beard award-winning chef who is getting 90% yield and creating dishes no one has ever conceived of before. Josh is dry-aging fish too, discovering that, with proper storing — and contrary to all convention — the flavor of fish flesh, like that of land animals, can be improved with hanging time, provided it’s kept dry and cold.

It’s hard to overstate the impact Josh’s work is going to have on the science and art of processing and cooking fish. If nothing else, it’ll change the way you see fish forever.

At WildFed, we're slowly shifting our approach to handling, processing, aging, cooking, and eating fish. There’s a lot of habit, convention, and institutional inertia to overcome. But the results Josh is getting make it clear… We can do more to honor the fish we eat, the people we feed, and the oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds we harvest from. 45% is unacceptable. Let’s start eating scale to tail!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/105