Teach a person to fish, they say, and they’ll eat for ever. It’s a nice idiom but it hasn’t always been true for me and my fishing buddies. With the shiniest gear and best intentions, we have spent enough hours driving home fishless to know that sometimes you do just need to buy one and stick it in the oven.
We’re thankful the freezers of our local supermarkets are packed with fish, already caught, filleted and crumbed – no expensive lures or slimy bait needed. So it’s about time we gave our opinion on which ones are the best.
With my fishing buddies Simon and Gus, I sit down to find our favourite frozen fish in a blind taste test. We rank only “classic crumbed” varieties available at major supermarkets, oven-bake them as instructed by the packaging, and serve them up straight: no salt, no ketchup, no tartare. We assess each of them on the taste and texture of both fish and crumb, as well as the ratio of each. In the process we find the catch of the day and figure out a few we wish we could throw back.
The best
Sealord New Zealand Southern Blue Whiting Classic Crumb Fillets: 320g, $9 for four fillets ($2.81 for 100g), available from Coles and Woolworths
Score: 8.5/10
Like a book and its cover, you probably shouldn’t judge a fish by its crumb but these hefty slabs make great first impressions. The breadcrumbs turn golden in the oven, with no signs of sogginess. They fare even better after a bite: delicate flakes of fish that actually taste and fall apart as fish should, a flavourful crunch from the crumb, and a generous fish-to-crust ratio. Mount it on a trophy and put it in the living room.
The best value
Blueline Seafood Classic Crumb Fish Fillets: 1kg, $9 ($0.90 for 100g), available from Woolworths
Score: 8/10
“Ah, the delicate dance of the crumbed fish,” one of our tasters says as he takes a bite of this full-sized crumbed fillet, listed as either pollock or whiting on the ingredient breakdown (we’re pretty sure we scored the latter). “You want it moist but not so moist that the crumb loses its integrity.” It’s a dance performed perfectly by this flaky, juicy slab of fish, its outer shell a paler blonde than other players but no less crunchy. There isn’t much of a fish taste to the fish itself but the texture and consistency is excellent. We’re all excited to revisit them for a future dinner paired with vinegary chips and a hearty squirt of tartare sauce.
The rest
Sealord New Zealand Dory Classic Crumb Portions: 320g, $9 for four fillets ($2.81 for 100g), available from Woolworths and Coles
Score: 8/10
Another great catch from the folks at Sealord, with the same solid, crunchy crumb as the overall winner, wrapped around a generous piece of dory. Since it’s a milder-tasting but denser protein, the difference between the two comes down to how fishy you like your fish. While it seems slightly saltier than its whiting buddy, we’d still be happy to find it dangling from the end of our lines.
Birds Eye Oven Bake Original Crumb 100% Wild Caught Fish Fillets: 425g, $12 for six fillets ($2.82 for 100g), available from Woolworths and Coles
Score: 7.5/10
These New Zealand hoki fillets are the definition of fine – not a revelation but not a disappointment. The golden crumb crunches just enough, the fish inside is white and mild, if a little vague on any actual “fish” flavour, and they bake to a nice golden hue. While they don’t transport us to a breezy seaside bach, in a sandwich with tartare sauce they’d get the job done. Are they gourmet? No. Are they bad? Also no. They exist, they’re crispy and sometimes that’s enough.
I&J Original Crumb Australian Hoki: 425g, $7 for six fillets ($1.65 for 100g), available from Woolworths and Coles
Score: 7/10
Hoki isn’t renowned for its big flavour so we’re surprised to find these slender triangles among the tastiest of the day. “These are the first I wish we had a bit of salt to sprinkle over,” one tester says. The seasoning lacks a little in both the crumb and the hoki. But the crispness of the crust, texture of the fish and lack of soggy layers between the two have us angling for another bite.
Just Caught Classic Crumbed Whiting Strips: 800g, $14 ($1.75 for 100g), available from Woolworths
Score: 6.5/10
What do you get if you cross a fish with a pepper grinder? These goujon-style whiting strips, apparently. There’s a lot to like about them, the crumb browns and crisps up beautifully while sticking obediently to the moist, flaky fish inside. But instead of the gentle fish flavour we find in most contenders, the whiting tastes as though it bathed in a bowl of white pepper before being crumbed. It’s not that we didn’t enjoy it – one taster excitedly claims the rest of the bag for fish tacos – but we think the taste is pronounced enough to warrant a “pepper flavoured” mention on the pack.
Birds Eye Air Baked Deep Sea Dory Lightly Crumbed: 380g, $12.60 for six fillets ($3.32 for 100g), available from Woolworths and Coles
Score: 6/10
Advertised as containing 50% less oil and fat than their fried counterparts, these “lightly crumbed” baked fillets – the most expensive of the lineup – look darker and less luminously appealing straight out of the pack. One taster calls them “alien fish”. Sadly, their allocated time in the oven doesn’t make them any more catwalk-ready. The crust is slightly dry and less crisp than others, with the kind of mealy texture you’d expect from a product that’s been baked instead of fried. But it’s the strong flavour of the crumb that catches us by surprise, a peppery, savoury punch that pretty much overpowers the taste of the decent – if entirely unremarkable – fish inside.
Coles Original Crumbed Wild Caught White Fish: 425g, $4.90 for six fillets ($1.15 for 100g), available from Coles
Score 5.5/10
Among the supermarket brand contenders, Coles Crumbed Fish Fillets swim slightly ahead of the school. The fish offers a surprisingly good texture – not too mushy, not too dry – and the crumb has a nice crunch with a decent fish-to-coating ratio (a rare achievement in supermarket seafood). The golden-brown crumb is a touch darker than most, hinting at depth of flavour that, sadly, never quite arrives. “This would probably be tasty enough with lemon and tartare,” one of our testers says. Next time, he asks, can he bring his own condiments?
Sealord New Zealand Hoki Classic Crumb Flaky Fillets: 480g, $10.50 for six fillets ($2.18 for 100g), available from Woolworths and Coles
Score: 5.5/10
Part of fishing is learning to accept that some days are just not your days, and it seems to be as true for Sealord as it is for us amateurs. After a great showing from their dory and whiting, this is a fall from grace. The crumb is dotted with soggy sinkholes as soon as they come out of the oven, while some of the coating falls away from the fish entirely. Inside, the fish is dry – all the moisture seemed to have migrated to the crust – mashed and doesn’t taste of anything. As one taster says: “This is like a piece of fish designed by AI.”
KB’s Classic Crumb Whiting Fillets: 450g, $7.50 for six fillets ($1.67 for 100g), available from Coles
Score: 4/10
If you buy your frozen fish only for the crumb and get annoyed when that pesky fish gets in the way, this is the pick for you. The shell of breadcrumbs is so impressively, majestically thick that biting into it feels like eating a fish sandwich. And while there’s not a lot of fish evident, it still brings an unexpected hint of dim sim; a flavour profile no piece of fish comes by naturally. It’s crispy and it’s edible but if you’re looking for whiting that actually tastes like whiting, best to cast your line elsewhere.
Woolworths Crumbed Fish Fillet: 425g, $4.90 for six fillets ($1.15 for 100g), available from Woolworths
Score: 4/10
“If you blindfolded me,” one taster says after a bite of this home-brand entry, “I would guess this was a terrible chicken nugget. There’s nothing about this that says ‘fish’.” It’s true: the gummy texture and strange, faintly chemical aftertaste in the thin layer of fish could easily be mistaken for low-quality chicken – or one of the sponges on aisle nine. While the outer shell of the crumb has a good crunch, the millimetres of soggy breadcrumbs beneath make it all a bit unpleasant to eat.
Ocean Royale Golden Crisp Original Fish Fillets: 425g, $4.49 for six fillets ($1.06 for 100g), available from Aldi
Score: 3/10
Aldi has a solid history of performing well in these taste tests, so expectations for their Alaska pollock fillets are steep. As is the let-down. The thin, flavourless layer of fish hidden inside the thick, flavourless crumb has a pasty consistency, “as though it’s been reconstituted from scraps of fish like a cheap chicken nugget”, one tester says. All three of us agree that these are our least favourite fillets. Thankfully we are left with plenty more fish in the sea. And freezer.
