May 17, 2006
Copper River Salmon: Yes Or No?
The real burning question of the season, politics aside. Is Copper River Salmon a pricey scam or not? Please discuss.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 17, 2006
10:16 AM | Email This
1. Well, wild-caught sockeye is the best in my book: oily, excellent meat. If it comes from the Copper River opening, ok by me. Other wild caught sockeye is great also . . ..
2. Copper River salmon is just another yuppee thing, along with Hummers,Starbucks,and Escaldes. I can make it without them. This not saying there bad,I just have other priorities.
3. Pricey - Yes. Scam - I don't think so. A scam would imply marketing and selling an inferior product as better than it is. CR salmon really is that much better than other salmon (farm or Atlantic).
Please pass the pepper....
4. I agree with eater. The Copper River provenance is mainly a marketing scheme - a rather successful one, but still marketing.
I once clandestinely cleaned two female sockeye from my employer's morning catch on my way out of Bristol Bay and stuffed them full of ice in a small cooler and talked my way onto the plane home with them.
They were better than any big, gnarly spawned-out kings, fancy-pants labels or no.
5. It may be that wild-caught sockeye taste much bether than other form of catch, but the price for it is a total scam, IMO.
I am the kind of guy who will never buy any extraordinarily expensive stuff such as a Rolex, exotic cars such as Ferrari when I can find a reasonably priced substitute no matter how rich I may become, and Copper River Salmon falls into that cateory of things.
6. It is what they say it is...one darn good fish. But what people forget, with all the hype, is it is stoll just a fish, albeit one of the better strains of sockeye or king. I heve my buddy bring down fourty pound cases of Halibut Cheeks and Bristol Bay Red when I want to endulge. Salmon is still free, even comparable salmon to CR, but everybody but the guys who catch them now have to pay for cheeks & BB Red King Crab. Don't forget about sable fish, black cod, if you want to smoke some of the best there is to smoke.
7. Copper River is excellent. We had a fisherman friend that could get it to us cheap.
Although I'll by something else becuase CRS is way to expensive. But that's supply and demand correct? Lots of people all over the world want Copper River Salmon. Demand is high supply is very limited. Look at Kobe beef. I've had it. It's great. Is it worth the price when you can get something that tastes as good or almost as good? No.
8. No doubt in my book Bristol Bay is better than CR - better than anything. Never had any of God's creatures taste and feel so perfectly to my pallet. Truly food fit for a Chinook.
9. Is CR salmon great eating? YES
Is it worth the price? That's up to the person spending the money for it or not.
It is a better, fresher cut of fish just because they get it to market faster and with better care in transport and packaging. Other, cheaper salmon may not be as fresh or handled more during transport so it may not be as high quality on your table. Also, there are significant differences between species.
10. My wife and I will overpay for King CRS once each season, and enjoy it with a bottle of pinot noir for which we will also overpay. It's a special once a year indulgence for us. And if someone were to blind taste-test me, I'm 100% sure I could tell the difference.
11. It's marketing. I'm a 20 fisherman from Sitka AK. They claim it is an oiler fish than other sockeye. I've gillnetted Bristol Bay a number of times and from my experience they are the same. Sockeye is an oiler fish that stay good longer and has a richer flavor than other salmon.
12. Just buy it whole at Costco for a good price and cook it up yourself at home. Then you won't get stung with ultra-high prices
13. As someone who has worked in the commerical seafood business (four summers on Kodaik Island) I would say that the price is justified by both demand and the high transportation cost.
Most of these fish are sent down from AK overnight within hours of being caught on an airplane. They're put in big white totes, and iced down (range of processes: slush, belly iced, etc).
Personally I prefer salmon from the icy waters of the Shelikof Strait, or Uyak Bay -- but when it comes down to it remember this: Friends Don't Let Friends Eat Farmed Salmon!
14. Of course it's a scam. It's a fish. $37 bucks a pound for fish? What's next? Seattleites paying five bucks for a cup of coffee? er....
As mentioned above, it's typical, yuppie Seattle. Where style over substance reigns. But to those who buy it and indulge, enjoy yourselves. Nothing wrong with that. I indulge in things from time to time as well (Earthquake burgers mmmmm) as it's the little things in life that are most appreciated.
However, all the hype over an over-priced fish is a bit much for me.
15. I look forward to week three of Copper River Salmon when the price comes down to something I'm willing to pay. Copper River Salmon are generally about the best fish you'll find in the grocery store.
16. Scam?
Only if a restaurant or fishmonger is using some other fish in it's place.
Like any product, the price reflects on what the market will pay.
The seafood marketing folks are doing exactly what they are supposed to do...um, marketing their premium product.
As others have posted, these fish are specially handled and air shipped during an extremely limited time. This adds cost.
Wild salmon cost more than farmed, troll (line) caught salmon cost more than gillnet caught salmon, and Kings fetch better prices than Chums. Why? because it is a superior product. In my opionion, Copper River salmon is better than most other Chinook salmon.
If you don't like the price, don't buy the product.
17. I'll be the kid in "The Emperor's New Clothes": I grew up in AK, eating salmon all the time, and quite frankly, I could do without ever having it again. Boring, tasteless... zzzzz. I just don't get why it is such a big deal.
As for the "Copper River Salmon" thing: it is just the first salmon available in the season. That's it. Nothing special about it. All wild salmon spend their adult years in the same ocean waters, and there is nothing special about the ones that return to the Copper River.
18. All I know is that salmon tastes much better now that it became an endangered species.
19. Scam.
Folks from Alaska talk about how Copper River was garbage salmon that could hardly be given away until a marketing genius turned it around.
Avoid.
20. Yes copper river is just garbage Salmon. There is a huge difference in oil content and taste between the different runs. I do not care for the copper river fish, it is plain, no good oil and rather mushy with not a lot of body. The best local fish for oil and taste is the Skagit kings followed by the Fraser white kings both when fresh make the Copper river fish taste like dirt.
21. Not sure about this. I tried it the first time when it was on sale for half off at QFC, and it was better than what I'd usually eaten. I've had it a couple more times since, but can't really say it's all that. But then, my favorite is, I've heard, the cheapest stuff. Can't remember the name. One that I hadn't heard before, but it apparently has a common name, but I forget what the equivalent is. I tend to like it firm and mild.
I also avoid farmed, not for any eco-flake reasons, but just because I don't much like the way it tastes. Maybe canned and made into salmon patties, but not as a slab.
22. Farm/Atlantic (which is farm) suck and I refuse to eat them. The Copper River Salmon represents what much of the wild salmon from any cold northern river do. A salmon that is oily, juicy and flavorful. I can prepair many of the Alaskan salmon that will taste every bit as good as CR. Key is to not over cook - keep towards medium rare, grilling is better, easy on the seasoning. That being said, CR is a very large river and the name is out there via slick marketing. Capitalism at work, more power to them. I'll indulge, price be damned, a couple times a year.
Now if you want to talk good eating, Spotted Owl, mmmm, tastes a lot like Bald Eagle.
23. I grew up in AK, too. I ate salmon two or three times a week; fresh in the summer months (different species as they run at different times), and frozen in the winter. Without a doubt, Chinook is, and tastes like, Chinook, regardless of where it is caught. Same is true of Sockeye, and both are caught all over Alaska, including the Copper River.
What really determines how a fish tastes is 1) How fresh is it? As pointed out above, CR salmon that is specially flown here is going to be the freshest Chinook or Sockeye you can get, so it will likely test best and will be "worth the price" if you are willing to pay for this special treatment.
2) How healthy was the fish you happen to be eating?
3) How much had the fish transformed before it was caught? For those of you who don't know, salmon swim up a river for only one reason: to spawn and die. As they get farther upstream, they change color, their mouths develop a "hook", the get a hump behind their heads, and they phyically deteriorate. As they transform, their meat becomes more and more mealy.
Items 2 and 3 are pretty much up to chance - when the season opens (date wise) the salmon may be more or less transformed, and you won't know how healthy an individual fish you're eating was when it was caught. Fortunately, there isn't that much variation in these two factors for the short period when the king and sockeye seasons first open on teh copper river, and that is now, when these fish are first flown down here. It was marketing that created the market here that makes it profitable to do that, by the way.
Taste is subjective, but if measured by the three factors above, CR kings and reds (Chinook and Sockeye) are the best fish you're going to get in Seattle unless you catch salmon yourself in Washington waters. But they are nothing special to people in AK who can fish for Kings, Silvers, Pinks, and Reds anytime they want in thousands of different places.
24. There was a time a few years ago when I could really strongly taste the difference between CR and any trolled Chinook (say, Columbia River stuff), whether I caught it myself or bought it. That's not really the case anymore. Maybe it's due to overfishing or the transport, but the oil content that used to overwhelmingly favor CR Chinooks doesn't really seem to be there to me anymore.
So is it worth the price? If the particular piece of fish is as oily as CR was when I first tasted it, absolutely (assuming you have the means). That was the best salmon I've ever tasted. Is it now? Not so much, but it's still not a scam.
25. Total scam. I've eaten a lot of salmon, and while Copper River salmon is good, it really isn't that special or different from any other wild caught salmon that is available at this time of year.
26. We need a congressional investigation into the price gouging going on by the Big Fish industry.
If price controls were put in place, we wouldn't have these problems. $20/pound should be the legal limit. Then there would be enough Copper River Salmon for everyone. These high prices mostly hurt fish eaters of color, homeless fish eaters, and transgendered fish eaters. It's an outrage, and it's all Bush's fault!
27. You won't catch me paying a premium for Copper River Salmon. A couple years back, I used to barbecue salmon almost every week during the summer. I would shop the sales, but still only buy quality wild-caught salmon.
Sure I've had Copper River Salmon, and yes it can be pretty good. But it is not significantly better than other fresh wild-caught Alaskan King or Sockeye. At least not better to the point of costing so darn much more.
I am willing to bet that most people cannot tell the difference between CR salmon and other highquality wild-caught Alaskan Salmon. Some salmon snobs can (and I am a salmon snob), but many relatively inexperienced salmon eaters just fall for the advertising and plunk down the big bucks. That's okay for them, but not for me.
And people should compare CR salmon to other wild caught Alaskan salmon, not the inferior farmed Atlantic color-added junk.
28. Copper River Salmon is the best. The Gig Harbor Commercial Fishermen's club serves it at their annual sring dinner dance. One of the club members fishes the Copper R. run and puts the freshly caught sockeye on the plane just in time for the dinner. Tickets sell out fast as folks covet the first fresh Alaska salmon of the year.
It's definately worth the price.
29. Resist buying it and the price will go down. It beats farm raised salmon, but its just like gas, resist buying and the price will eventually go down.
30. Good Marketing. Still, freshness is pretty much everything when it comes to fish. I've eaten humpies caught in the saltchuck off Whidbey that tasted fantastic, but it was mostly due to having caught them an hour or two before eating.
31. It's all that copper that gives it the color and flavor. You can get the same effect by eating a pre-1983 penny with every mouthful of regular salmon. Really though, fresh-caught is what distinguishes good salmon.