Monday, November 10, 2014

Can salmon be a rich source of calcium?


Removing the bones from cooked fish, before eating the flesh, is not only a waste of mineral nutrients. In some cases it can be difficult, and lead to a lot of waste of meat.

We know that many ancestral cultures employed slow-cooking techniques and tools, such as earth ovens (a.k.a. cooking pits; see ). Slow-cooking fish over a long time tends to soften the bones to the point that they can be eaten with the flesh.

The photo below shows the leftovers of a whole salmon that we cooked recently. We baked it with vegetables on a tray covered with aluminum foil. We set the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and baked the salmon for about 5 hours.



The end result is that we can eat the salmon, a rich source of omega-3 fat, with the bones. No need to remove anything. Just take a chunk, as you can see in the photo, and eat it whole.

It is a good idea to marinate the salmon for a few hours prior to baking it. This will create enough moisture to ensure that the salmon does not dry up during the baking process.

If you are a carnivore, you can make a significant contribution to sustainability by eating the whole animal, or as much of the animal as possible. This applies to fish, as I discussed here before (, , ).

Add eating less to this habit, and your health will benefit greatly.

10 comments:

  1. Wouldn't cooking the fish for that long damage the omega-3s?

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  2. That looks nice!
    I like canned salmon for this reason - you get to eat the bones and skin. And canned salmon is mostly wild salmon, too, unlike a lot of the fresh salmon sold in most countries.

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  3. Hi Anon. No the omega-3 fats would not be damaged. What tends to cause damage (chemical alteration) is oxidation through prolonged air exposure; and refining as an oil, particularly if the oil is exposed to air or used in high heat cooking.

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  4. Interesting. Thanks very much!

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  5. But if you eat the bones yourself, what are your pigs to eat? That's so selfish!

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  6. Hate to say it but the salmon does look awfully dry.

    Perhaps the sous vide method or a simple water bath in a fish kettle would have been better.

    Pauline

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  7. would 5 hrs of cooking not result in lots of oxidised cholesterol?

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  8. Hi Anon. Dietary cholesterol is not easily oxidized (see link below). This seems to be true of lipids in general, as long as they are not refined/isolated as oils.

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0309174099001400

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  9. Salmon is one of my fav fish. I have it quite often but I really had no idea about the fact.

    Thanks Neck for sharing.

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