Salmon in the Kitchen

If you love eating salmon but aren’t too sure about preparing it yourself, then you should sign up for the Salmon in the Kitchen workshops that Living Oceans is hosting this summer in Vancouver. You’ll get a hands-on opportunity to cook, fillet and can fresh salmon under the guidance of expert chefs. Included in the cost of each workshop are the salmon supplied by Skipper Otto's Community Supported Fishery delivered fresh off the boat right into downtown Vancouver. You get to take the filleted/cooked/canned fish home with you.

Learning to fillet salmon. Photo: Sonia Strobel

Workshop details

Register online for the workshops
Cooking
A hands-on workshop that covers the basics and foundations of how to cook with salmon. Recipes will be different for each workshop. The workshop will include tastings for all participants and attendees will be sent home with copies of the recipes.
Maximum 8 participants per workshop. $52* per person per class.

• Tuesday, Aug. 18, 6:00 – 9:00 pm at Save On Meats, 43 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
• Tuesday, Sept. 15, 6:00 – 9:00 pm at Save On Meats, 43 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Filleting
Buying whole fish is often the most economical, as long as you don’t butcher the fish! Come master your knife skills in this hands-on workshop where you will get to fillet your own fish and vacuum seal it to bring it home.
Maximum 8 participants per workshop. $57* per person per class.

• Thursday, June 25, 6:00 – 8:00 pm at Save On Meats, 43 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
• Thursday, July 16, 6:00 – 8:00 pm Save On Meats, 43 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Canning
Canning salmon is one of the best ways to preserve the ocean’s bounty for the winter months and this demo-style workshop will teach you all the tricks of using a pressure canner. Workshop participants will take home a step-by-step salmon canning guide and a small jar of canned salmon.
Maximum 12 participants per workshop. $32* per person per class.

• Tuesday, Sept. 29, 6:00 – 8:00 pm at Save On Meats, 43 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

SmokingThere will also be two salmon smoking demo-style workshops in the fall. Details coming soon.
*$2 from the registration fee will go towards supporting ‘train-the-trainer’ workshops at local community kitchen spaces to help increase cooking skills and capacity in vulnerable populations.

Skipper Otto’s first started teaching people how to prepare salmon at Fisherman’s Wharf at Granville Island in Vancouver. Year after year the workshops have grown in popularity as people get more interested in eating locally and preparing their own gourmet meals. This year, they’re being held at the Save On Meats Community Kitchen at 43 W. Hastings.

Doris Gnandt and Serena Chu will be the chefs guiding the workshop with Doris handling the cooking and filleting and Serena taking care of the canning sessions.

Doris Gnandt (left) believes you should cook from the heart and it shows in her filleting and cooking demos. Serena Chu (right) likes to make things that are irresistibly tasty but actually healthy!

Skipper Otto’s filleter extraordinaire Rumi Hokubay practices the traditional Japanese method of filleting called San-Mai Ni Orosu. Participants in the Filleting Salmon workshops will get to fillet their own fish, vacuum seal it and bring it home!

The Salmon in the Kitchen workshop series creates community around—and awareness of—our local fisheries. Most of the fresh, local, sustainable fish caught by fishermen on the South Coast is exported or sent directly to high-end restaurants. As a result, over 80% of the seafood bought in Vancouver is imported. By teaching people the skills and knowledge about local seafood and how to handle it, we increase the value of the fishery to the local community. This in turn makes the local seafood supply chain more resilient and lends to increased food security in our community.

The workshops aren’t all work though. There’s a lot of fun involved too. And food. If you attend the Cooking with Salmon workshop don’t eat a big dinner beforehand, as you’ll need a good appetite to taste the recipes you’ll be cooking.

At the Canning with Salmon workshop participants will learn the basics of how to use a pressure canner, receive a step-by-step guide to reference later, and be able to take home one jar of canned salmon. Photo: Wendy Davis

We are grateful to our local partners and sponsor – Skipper Otto’s Community Supported Fishery, Save on Meats, Vancity enviroFund, and the Vancouver Foundation Greenest City Fund.

Aye, Matey - Are your favourite childhood fish sticks sustainable?

Kelly Roebuck is the Sustainable Seafood Campaign Manager at Living Oceans Society.

As a kid there are a few things we believe to be true that later along the line some way or another we find out just weren't real. Santa Clause. The tooth fairy. And for me, Captain Birds Eye.

Captain Birds Eye was an enchanting older fellow who seemed trustworthy and likable. He brought his catch of fish sticks oddly enough by sailboat (but to a 6-year old – a boat is a boat), while kids screamed with joy to be able to munch on yummy battered cod or something else that fooled children to think they weren't really eating a fish of any resemblance. The 'starry-eyed' image (or illusion) of fishing had started early.

But of course now, just like the tooth fairy, I know that Captain Birds Eye and his sailboat (ahem fishing boat) just are not real. Nor is the seemingly endless supply of fish sticks.

Setting the record straight on what we do around salmon farming

Opposition to net-cage salmon aquaculture in BC continues to escalate, particularly with new revelations of more positive findings for ISAv (Infectious Salmon Anemia virus). Lately, however, we've been alerted to some misunderstandings that are circulating with regard to our work to eradicate net-cages on the BC Coast. For the record, here are the facts.

We’d like to first stress that since its inception over a decade ago, Living Oceans has been committed to the total removal of all net-cage salmon farms from our oceans and a transition of the industry to closed containment. That commitment is shared by our partner organizations in CAAR (Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform) and has never wavered.


Citizens groups, fishermen, communities, activists and numerous First Nations have been protesting the proliferation of farms on the BC coast for over twenty years. But successive governments, both Federal and Provincial, have been equally committed to maintaining salmon aquaculture. It's a tough and ongoing struggle and sadly no strategies, to date, have succeeded in ensuring the removal of these farms.

Red tide, biolumenescence, and just where do you find sustainable Canadian seafood?

There are some pretty cool things living in the ocean. There are some pretty cool videos of things that live in the ocean, too. For instance, this video from Science News of sea urchin larvae developing into adults is pretty amazing. And in case you haven't seen it already, check out beautifully put-together video of bioluminescence in the waves near San Diago:

The light show that you see above is the result of millions of dinoflagellates (tiny marine algae) that washed ashore after a large algae bloom along the west coast. These blooms, which usually happens after an upwelling of nutrients form the deep waters off the continental shelf, is often called red tide as the algae are actually dense enough to change the colour of the seawater over a huge area. To get an idea of exactly how large an area, have a look at this satellite image of the waters off Vancouver Island in the fall of 2004. Just as these algae can change the colour of the water by day, they can also light them up by night by producing a chemical with one most wicked names known to science: LUCIFERIN.

Which is worse for the oceans - eating meat or eating fish?

It's a commonly-encountered sentiment amongst people who care about oceans: many marine ecosystems are in trouble; fisheries are a primary cause for much of this trouble; ergo, to help the ocean a person should stop eating fish.

This seems like a fairly straightforward argument. However, it gets murky very quickly if the person replaces seafood with meat from terrestrial production systems. Consider this: the UN FAO estimates that 18% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to livestock production. Read that again - 18% of all anthropogenic GHG emissions are associated with livestock production. This is more than the share attributable to transportation. (Read the FAO brief here).