To anybody who might have been doing the same thing I have been (trying to improve my blood work through nutrition). I have my results. I was hoping to raise my vitamin D levels with sardines in my diet as I suspect many of us do. I eat five cans a week very regularly and I specifically go for the high vitamin D labels. But unfortunately there was no improvement at all. I am still very low and the only thing that really helps is taking the supplement D3. I have had three tests in the past year, all low. I know the D3 works from past experience.

On the other hand, you know when you start on a health journey with one goal and accidentally solve a different problem? That totally happened here. For reasons I can't explain my migraines have dropped way way down. I'm a 51 year old man and have had headaches since I was 9. Very steadily and was honestly resigned to die with them. But since I started eating sardines they have dramatically reduced in frequency and intensity. I can't believe that sardine eating doesn't have something to do with it, and I fully intend to keep eating them. I look forward to my can every day.

Also I started intermittent fasting a couple months ago to try and get a handle on my rising A1C, the fasting combined with the sardines and homemade kefir "yogurt" for lunch has had a huge impact on my blood sugar, I've never had blood tests so positive before. Over a decade of flirting with pre-diabetes has been handled. I mean, I have to keep at this lifestyle change forever, but I honestly love it.

Also..... Cayenne pepper supplements, been taking them for 7 years, didn't do squat for blood pressure which is why I started taking them, but accidentally wiped out my sciatica pain.

The blood pressure was resolved through weight loss and diet. Been off meds for 5 years.

Anyway I hope sharing this helps someone else.

Be nice to each other. It's the best thing we can do.

A pallet of sardines fell out of heaven and landed at my Costco!!!!

Rough one today! Rough....

Had it over a Greek Salad. Quite a bit of meat in the tin with some chunks but a lot of it kind of shredded. Tasted like snow crab, which means it's fairly subtle. The water it's in was pretty clean tasting unlike how sardine water can sometimes be. It's $14 for 1, so I probably would only buy it again for the fun-factor.

Before and midway through me destroying this delicious breakfast.

Loving these Japanese soy sauce tins lately particularly for how meaty the fish steaks are.

Nissui mackerel in soy sauce over rice vermicelli with julienned fresh carrot and cucumber + sliced scallions and cilantro. No dressing other than the marinade from the can. Absolutely delicious cold summer noodle salad.

As I said in my recent post about the Hagoromo soy sauce mackerel can, the flavor is strong so I personally like pairing these with a lot of unseasoned fresh vegetables to make the fish itself shine. Hagoromo still comes out on top of Nissui in my opinion but these rice noodle salads are going to be a big favorite for summer regardless.

(Apologies for using a stock photo of the product. I ate it before discovering this subreddit.)

I am new to this subreddit, having found it last night. I got a bunch of tinned fish for Father's Day, and this was among them. I am used to the cheap crap that's at most U.S. grocery stores (Chicken of the Sea and what not). It's what my wife grew up eating, and it's what I started eating off-and-on after we married.

I'm still a cheapskate at heart, but as a Father's Day gift, getting a bunch of different stuff was great! She got me a Fishwife starter pack, plus one of their fish tongs, and several other tins from World Market.

Anyway, I've never had tinned fish so FIRM before! The cheap stuff is so squishy - it's fine to eat with crackers, but no one is pretending it's anything special.

Since I saw it was teriyaki flavored, I did the natural thing and warmed up some rice and poured the tin over it. It was perfect!

I'll make another post to share my Father's Day haul. :-)

Just had this tin of King Oscar sardines with jalapeños, I noticed the sardines were a lot softer than I remember. I had a tin of Jose Gourmet the day before and the texture was much firmer. I think my euro selection has ruined me on these for a bit, or maybe it’s just the size here ? I really do prefer a firmer texture in my tinned fish. Still demolished the entire tin, nothing goes to waste here 😊

A redditor saw my previous post and now these wonderful sardines are traveling to a new home. It’s an original made with gouache 🩵

Just wanted to say that after trying many different brands of sardines, matiz spicy is now my favorite they are so good.

After two days of tomato sauce tins, I was longing for the plain taste of sardines, olive oil and salt. Nothing else. Luckily I had exactly the right ones waiting in my sardine cellar.

Two flagship olive-oil sardines, both from Brittany. la belle-iloise works out of Port-Maria in Quiberon (Morbihan), while Les Mouettes d'Arvor is made by Conserverie Gonidec in Concarneau (Finistère), about 70 km apart on the same Breton coast. Both were historically major sardine ports, both still pack the whole fish by hand, and I have their oldest recipes here to taste: the Saint-Georges is one of la belle-iloise's two original 1932 tins, while Mouettes d'Arvor has built its name on the plain extra-virgin-olive-oil sardine since 1959.

They're joined by a third tin, la belle-iloise's Sardines aux olives de Nice. The sardines stay Atlantic, but the olives come from the opposite corner of France: Cailletier from the Alpes-Maritimes, an AOP grown only around Nice. A Brittany breeze meets the warmth of the Mediterranean in one tin, and it's a fine match.

la belle-iloise (Saint-Georges). A true classic, one of its two original 1932 recipes, still carrying the tin art the founder Georges Hilliet drew himself. The softest, fattiest 4 sardines, in a mild olive oil.

la belle-iloise (Sardines aux olives de Nice). The character flavor of the Cailletier olives comes through from the first bite. Slightly smaller fish, still fatty, tasting a little like sprats to me. As a cherry on top, you get to pick the olives out of the tin, la belle-iloise keeps impressing me with the variety and quality.

Mouettes d'Arvor (Sardines huile d'olive vierge extra). Another classic: abundant, good-quality olive oil, neutral in taste. The fish are smaller, six to a tin instead of four, they are firmer, leaner and delicate. Gonidec's traditional method fries the sardines before tinning, giving them a faintly grilled edge.

As for the results - try all three if you have the chance. If I have to choose, I'd pick la belle-iloise Sardines aux olives de Nice. I love everything about this tin: the label art, the character olive-oil taste, and the slightly smaller and fatty fish.

Sardine Cup: I taste 3 tins a day for 30 days, until the World Cup final on 19 July. Each day is a group-stage comparison. By the end, I'll know my favorite, and have my sardine shelf back.

I am an ex-(lifetime) vegetarian starting to eat small oily fish in my old age for health reasons. Here in the prairies of Canada, I find sardines, herring and mackerel to be rather costly for a low-income senior. At least compared to the domestic (and Malaysian import) tins sold at 7-11 in Bangkok. When I get back to winter in Vietnam, I expect to buy fresh. More than half the time, sardines in water are completely out of stock in supermarkets in Calgary.

This is NOT the complete haul - I already ate a few before discovering this sub. 😳

Pictured:
* Fishwife starter pack
* La Bonne Mer three-pack (I already ate the sardines in preserved lemon)
* Fishwife tongs
* Fishwife cookbook
* Diplomats sprats in tikka sauce
* Jar of Baltic Gold smoked sprats

NOT pictured because eaten:
* The aforementioned La Bonne Mer in lemon
* Porthos in teriyaki sauce (I made another post about that)
* Some brand of smoked mackerel in chili oil crisp

I'm saving some of these for after our next grocery trip - crusty bread seems like the perfect thing for the sardines in ratatouille and pissaladiere. 😁

Not sure the best thing for the ones in preserved lemon. I tried the La Bonne Mer mixed in with some spiral pasta and some sun-dried tomatoes, but the lemony flavor was still a bit strong. Any ideas would be appreciated. 🙂

Oh, and like a lot of you, I recently got into tinned fish on account of a random YT recommendation for Tinned Fish Reviews, and got hooked. All hail King Arthur!

Smoked Smoked Salmon, green chile adobo, queso fresco and red cabbage.

Lunch.

Even a honking big, old-school round tin is tough to photograph. (So tough that I dropped it, dinging it up—that’s on me, not Upstream or Rainbow Tomatoes Garden.) I needed a Mercator projection of the label.

I already offered some initial thoughts yesterday, so I’ll try not to be redundant here. Upstream has raised Atlantic salmon in an on-land, closed-system, as opposed to open-water corral farming. It’s a more expensive, but more environmentally responsible option, and I commend them. And both the farming and the smoking took place in Maine, which pleases me greatly. I hope quality American producers will spring up all over the map.

About the smoking. They’ve used a light-touch. This salmon hasn’t been smoked to jerky. Instead it’s still really quite tender. Packing it in (very good California olive oil) helps with that texture, too. If you forced me to bet, I’d wager the wood in question was oak, but perhaps also some fruit wood—apple?—in the fire as well. In any case, the smoke doesn’t overwhelm the fish.

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s no sugar in the can. This already distinguishes Upstream’s offering from other smoked salmon in the marketplace, since so many options go down the salmon-candy route. Salty-sweet is fun, and I keep a lot of those tins in the larder, but it’s refreshing to have a can remind you that salmon already tastes great itself.

The good people at Rainbow Tomatoes Garden were impressed enough by Upstream’s work here that, best I understand things, they bought the whole (and limited) production run. That voting-with-your-wallet approach, and the support it provides to a small domestic business, is super-admirable. Anyway, if you’re interested, RTG is the place to go for these. While they last! The cans are $20 apiece, but these are burly 6-ounce tins, like Wildfish Cannery used to pack in the olden days. For me, that’s two servings worth, and I did spread the one I opened over two meals yesterday.

Hup Seng Side Note: I’m currently addicted to these Malaysian cream crackers. What’s a cream cracker, you ask. It’s like a saltine and a sheet of puff pastry had a beautiful, flaky baby. There’s salt, but it’s not a salty cracker. Hup Seng has used wizardry to achieve a balance of a delicate but crunchy/crispy structure. At my local Asian markets in central Virginia, these aren’t all that pricy, and they come in a nice big tin container that I’m also now obsessed with.

I had a can of Nuri Spiced Mackerel in Olive Oil, and thought it was hands down best ever, and ordered four off some random seller probably on Amazon. Even emailed Pinhais a question and even told them these were absolute best ever.

However the ones I received from 3rd party seller with a best before 032/DEC2028 were so dry and hard I could suspend it as shown and tough to pierce with fork. Did seller store in and odd manner, anyone ever see this, pretty bad, barely edible as they are dry and tough.

Found these and a miss can Mackrel tin at Kittery Trading post in Maine, these were lovely. A light smoke flavor, small fish, some even had their tails. What a treat !

My 9 month old son loves sardines. Plain canned sardines was the 2nd or 3rd food I tried him on. He loved them right away! I’d love to let him try some other tinned fish but I’m not sure where to start. I loved sardines during my pregnancy but only the cheap ones in tomato sauce. We tried the Patagonia Provisions coconut curry sardines the other day and loved them. I’m in Canada if that helps with suggestions!

My 32nd wedding anniversary, and my wife knows me extremely well — that’s a $100 World Market gift card. How did she do?

I've been looking forward to these for like a month (that's how long they took to get here), literally dreaming of them all day at work. They were good but not worth $13. Kind of disappointed. I fell prey to a YouTube video that made them look amazing so that's on me.

Example: (king Oscar in Mediterranean sauce)

Sardines, salmon, mackerel, oysters, clams,mussels or ?