How to tell good smoked fish from bad

Smoked fish goes into nearly everything — jollof, egusi, pepper soup, plain rice, or eaten standing up with nothing but pepper. Which makes it strange how little most of us are taught about choosing it. Fish that has been badly smoked, or smoked a long time ago, will ruin a pot that everything else in was fine.

The good news is that fish tells you the truth quickly, if you know which questions to ask it.

Smell it first

This is the whole test, and everything else is confirmation.

Good smoked fish smells of smoke and of the sea. It should be a clean smell — woody, a little sharp, the way a fire smells the morning after.

Bad smoked fish smells of ammonia. Sour, chemical, faintly like a toilet. That smell means the fish began to spoil before it was smoked, and no amount of pepper, crayfish or seasoning will take it out. Smoking preserves fish; it does not repair it.

If a seller will not let you smell the fish, that is also an answer.

Then press it

Take the fish and press the thickest part with your thumb.

• Firm, with a little give — right. The flesh held together through smoking.
• Crumbling into flakes at a touch — it has been sitting too long, or it was dried harder than it was smoked. Fine crumbled into soup, poor for anything else.
• Damp or slightly slimy — put it down. It has taken on moisture, and moisture in smoked fish means mould is on its way if it is not there already.

Turn it over and look into the belly cavity. That is where the white or greenish fuzz of mould appears first, and it is where sellers arrange the fish so you will not look.

Oily fish and lean fish are not the same purchase

Mackerel — titus — and other oily fish keep their fat through smoking, so they stay moist enough to eat as they are. They are the ones worth buying whole and eating with rice or plantain.

Leaner fish smoke drier and harder. They are not worse; they are for a different job. They want time in liquid — a soup, a stew — to soften and give their flavour up. Buying a hard dry fish and expecting to eat it off the plate is how people conclude they do not like smoked fish.

Bring it home properly

Smoked fish spoils from damp, not from heat.

• Let it cool completely before it goes into anything closed. Warm fish in a sealed bag makes its own water.
• Keep it dry and airtight. A tin, a jar, or a bag with the air pressed out.
• If you are keeping it more than a week or two, freeze it. It survives freezing very well.
• If it has softened, a short spell in a low oven or over gentle heat drives the moisture off and brings the smell of smoke back.

One thing worth knowing

Almost all smoked and preserved fish carries salt, sometimes a great deal of it. That is part of how the preserving works. If you are watching blood pressure, that matters more than the fish itself does — and a rinse, or a short soak in water before cooking, takes a surprising amount of it out without costing the flavour.