Buy Fresh Halibut for Tasty Sushi

Tuna may be the most common fish for making sushi, but fresh halibut is rapidly becoming the choice of discerning chefs in top restaurants. Halibut’s creamy white flesh is sweet and firm, perfect for preparing as sushi or sashimi. Its delicate taste makes it especially popular at the beginning of a meal as an appetizer. If you’re planning to use halibut for sushi or sashimi, be sure to buy fresh halibut from a reputable fish market. The fresher the fish and seafood shipped, the sweeter and more flavorful the sushi will be.

Besides the freshness factor, when you buy fresh halibut from a reputable online fish market, you can be sure to get Pacific halibut, usually from Alaska. Alaskan halibut, in season from late autumn through early winter, is one of the more sustainable white fish choices for sushi. Pacific halibut is considered an especially thoughtful choice for sushi and other dishes because Alaskan fisheries use positive management and responsible fishing methods. If you’re concerned about ethical food production and sustainable fishing, Pacific halibut is your best choice for sushi and sashimi.

Halibut, often called hirame or ohyo in Japanese, has firm, sweet pink flesh. The best piece of the fish for sushi is the “porch”, a muscular bit of flesh located just under the dorsal fin. It tends to be higher in fat than the rest of the halibut, and has a creamy, chewy texture that’s perfect when served raw as sushi or sliced in paper thin slices for sashimi.

Selecting Fresh Halibut

When choosing fish in a fish market, look at the eyes first. A fresh fish will have clear, bright eyes with no hint of cloudiness. The inside of the gills should be bright red in color and the halibut should have no ammonia or “fishy” smell. Fresh fish smells like the ocean – fresh as a sea breeze. The flesh should be firm, and not slimy.

Most home cooks prefer to buy their halibut cleaned, skinned and filleted, and most online fish markets will give you a choice of buying whole fish or fillets. Figure that one pound of cleaned halibut will make enough sushi to serve eight to twelve people as appetizers or four for as an entrée.

Order seafood online no more than one to two days before you intend to serve it. The market will generally ship it to you the same day the halibut is caught, and you’ll have it within 24 hours. When it arrives, check the halibut for freshness, then place it in your refrigerator to stay chilled until just before you’re ready to prepare and serve the sushi.

When you order seafood online and buy fresh halibut, you’ll be buying one of the tastiest and healthiest fish available. Fresh, sweet and delectable, it’s guaranteed to be the hit of your next dinner party or a family favorite for special dinners.

What To Know When You Order Seafood Online

As more and more people hear about the health benefits of seafood – especially cold-water seafood and fish like halibut, tuna and lobster – it’s becoming more common to order seafood from an online source. There are many good reasons to order seafood shipped directly to your door if you live a distance from the ocean, and a number of things you should know and understand before you place your order.

Benefits When You Order Seafood

When you have seafood shipped to you from a dockside market, you’re practically guaranteed to get all the wonderful goodness that fresh seafood has to offer. You can almost be certain that the seafood shipped to you is fresher than anything you’ll find at your supermarket’s fish counter. In fact, unless you’re ordering a local seafood specialty, fresh seafood shipped from an online fish market will even be fresher than anything you can buy in the local fish market.

Your order will be individually packed on ice and shipped directly to you in a foam cooler, usually by 24-hour shipping. The fish you buy locally in your supermarket has probably spent days on the road, crowded on a railroad car or shoved frozen into the back of a refrigerated truck. Large shipments of salmon and halibut and tuna are often shipped in huge frozen blocks that are thawed and sold as “previously frozen” at their destination. Which do you think will taste better?

You can have your order delivered directly to your door. If you’re planning a special occasion dinner or serving seafood for a party, having your seafood shipped is a huge timesaver and convenience. When you order seafood from an online fish market, you don’t have to spend half your day running out to the market to get your fish or buy lobster tails.

What You Need to Know Before You Order Seafood

The single most important thing to know when you place an order, whether it’s for halibut, tuna, smoked fish or lobster tails, is the reputation of the market from which you’re buying. Keep in mind that many online seafood sources aren’t actually fish markets. In fact, they’re middlemen, selling frozen and previously frozen fish that’s no different than what you’ll find in your grocer’s fish case.

These days, social media and review sites make it much easier to find fish markets that actually sell fresh-off-the-boat seafood, and take pride in providing only the best. Don’t be satisfied with the “testimonials” you’ll find on the market’s website. Instead, search for them at a review site that lets customers post honest, unbiased reviews of local businesses. It’s one of the best ways to make sure you’re doing business with one of the best places to order seafood online. And after all, you wouldn’t want to serve anything but the best.

Have Fresh Seafood Shipped to Benefit Your Health

Fresh seafood is among the healthiest of all foods, not to mention the tastiest. While freshwater fish are a great, lean alternative to higher fat red meat, they don’t provide the same essential benefits as seafood, especially those fish and shellfish that thrive in cold, salt water. Tuna, halibut and salmon are among the highest sources of omega 3 fatty acids, the component that makes fish oil so very good for you. If you don’t live close to the ocean, you can still benefit from the flavor and health benefits of coldwater fish when you have fresh seafood shipped directly from the dock to your door.

The Quest for Fresh Seafood

Halibut, salmon and tuna are most plentiful along the West Coast, especially off the coasts of the U.S. from northern California up through Alaska. If you’re not lucky enough to live within a short drive of the coast, your choices used to be limited to whatever fish was shipped across country on a boxcar or refrigerated truck. At best, the fish will be days old when it arrives at your grocer’s fish counter. At worst, depending on the care taking during its transport, it could be on the verge of spoilage – or actually spoiled. Either way, the flavor wasn’t anywhere near the quality of seafood bought right off the boat and cooked at home within a day or two.

Where to Buy Halibut and Fresh Seafood

The well-to-do have always had the option to have seafood shipped to them from across the country. Knowing where to buy halibut, salmon and other high-end, healthy ingredients is part of the training for a chef, after all. Until the advent of theInternet, though, it wasn’t quite as easy for the rest of us to just order seafood and have it delivered directly to the kitchen door.

These days, those looking to have fresh seafood shipped only have to look as far as their favorite search engine. There are many fish markets online that also ship seafood anywhere in the country. The only trick is in finding one you can trust to consistently deliver high quality, fresh seafood – and there are a few tricks that can help you find a great online fish market.

Always buy seafood from an online market that has a real world fish market, preferably on the docks.

Check the reviews for the fish market on the various social local review sites. A business that has a great reputation locally is most likely to also ship their best seafood to their online customers.

Check the shipping schedule. Order from online markets that ship daily. They’re most likely to ship seafood that was caught the same day.

When you have fresh seafood shipped from the dock to your door, you’ll get the benefit of all the goodness the sea has to offer, both in flavor and in health. Why would you settle for anything less than the best?

Order Seafood for Great Gifts

If you’re the type of person who enjoys giving distinctive gifts to your friends, family and acquaintances, here’s a suggestion you may not have considered: order seafood online and have it shipped fresh for a holiday dinner. Whether you choose to have fresh seafood shipped, buy smoked seafood or send a gift of delectable frozen or fresh lobster tails, your gift will be appreciated and savored – and long remembered. If you’ve never considered having seafood shipped as a gift, these tips and suggestions can help you make the right choices.

Know Their Tastes and Requirements

Before you decide to order seafood as a gift, be sure that you know the tastes and dietary requirements of your gift recipients. You don’t want to send a gift that your friends can’t eat, after all. That said, there are many good choices of fresh seafood that are generally a safe and delicious choice, such as halibut. The sweet, firm flesh of fresh halibut is a delectable treat raw, as sushi or sashimi, and cooked in just about any style you can imagine. The mild flavor makes it a popular choice on gourmet menus around the world, and the health benefits are undeniable.

Buy Halibut and Other Seafood from a Real Fish Market

When you buy fresh seafood online, it’s important to buy from a real fish market, not a warehouse that sells canned and frozen goods that might have been hanging around for weeks or months. Many dockside fish markets now sell seafood online, so it’s easy to find a fish market where you can buy lobster tails, fresh halibut, smoked fish and other seafood delicacies and be assured that they’re fresher than what you’ll find in your grocer’s freezer.

Understand the Shipping Terms

Before you buy fresh seafood online, be sure that you read the website’s shipping terms and conditions. Look for an online fish market that ships seafood daily, and that guarantees the freshness of its fish and seafood. In most cases, the market will ship your seafood the same day you order it if your order is placed by a certain time. If your order is placed later in the day, your order will be shipped the next day and delivered within 24 hours. This ensures that your seafood purchases will be as fresh as possible when they reach you.

Fresh seafood is a delectable, gourmet treat for any season, but it’s especially welcome during the holiday season when people enjoy an extra touch of luxury. When you order seafood online as a gift, you can be sure that your gift will be appreciated.

What You Really Get When You Buy Halibut

Halibut, a cold water ocean fish, is rapidly becoming a favorite seafood choice among foodies of all stripes. The sweet, white flesh cooks firmly and flakes beautifully – but fresh halibut is just as delectable raw as it is cooked – it ranks with tuna as a favorite fish for use in sushi and sashimi. Something that tastes this good can’t really be good for you can it? Here’s a look at what you really get when you buy halibut.

Nutritionally Dense

When you buy halibut, you are buying a food that is packed with important nutrients, including minerals, vitamins and elements that your body can’t make for itself. Halibut is a very good source of protein, providing 27 g of protein per serving. Compare that to beef, which provides about 31 g per serving, with much more fat and cholesterol, and it’s easy to see why dietitians and nutritionists often include halibut on their list of must-eat foods. But protein is just the start of all the nutritional goodness you’ll find in this cold-water fish.

Like its cold-water cousins, tuna and salmon, halibut is an awesome source of omega 3 fatty acids, essential fats that your body can’t manufacture. Omega 3 is one of the most potent antioxidants scientists have discovered in the past 100 years. It not only has anti-aging effects, it helps your body rebuild nerve and brain cells and may help you fight memory losses associated with age. Did someone say fish is brain food? Yep, they were thinking about halibut.

Halibut is also a good source of several B vitamins, including vitamin B12 and B6, which help lower levels of homocysteine, a chemical byproduct of digestion that damages the artery walls. The B vitamins also seem to affect your moods – B12 in particular has a very beneficial effect on depression. Combine that with the benefits of omega 3 fish oil on mood, and it’s not unreasonable to say that people who eat halibut are happier people as well as being healthier.

Halibut is no slouch when it comes to providing minerals and essential trace elements either. It’s a very good source of magnesium, a natural calcium blocker, which helps improve circulation. When your blood circulates more freely, the oxygen and nutrients it carries get to every part of your body more efficiently – and that can only be a good thing. And if you have a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night with screaming charley horses – well, the magnesium in halibut is a great natural cure for that. Halibut also provides selenium and phosphorus, which help detox your blood and organs and keep you healthier.

When you count up all the nutrients and benefits packed into every serving of halibut, it turns out that you’re not just buying a delicious treat when you buy halibut – you’re providing your body with an entire medicine chest worth of nutrition and health-protecting nutrients. You can order seafood like fresh halibut online and have it delivered directly to your door, ready to cook for tonight’s dinner. Why put off getting healthy when it tastes so good?