Hmmm. I hope I could tell the difference, but read this (from today's Portland Oregonian).http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/1062158129284260.xml <br />farmed vs. wild <br /><br />09/02/03<br /><br />LESLIE COLE <br /><br />Midwesterners. Surely they couldn't tell farmed salmon from wild as well as a Northwesterner, right? Guess again, fish lovers. <br /><br />In a blind tasting of wild Pacific king (chinook) salmon and farmed Atlantic, conducted in Portland and Chicago last month, more people preferred the wild salmon -- but only by a small margin. And the Midwesterners did a better job of guessing which was which. <br /><br />FOODday conducted the tastings as part of The Oregonian's series on farmed salmon -- and its impact on Northwest fishing fleets, human health and the global environment -- that continued Sunday. We also wanted to know, can you really taste the difference between wild and farmed? <br /><br />Only three of 11 tasters in Portland could tell which salmon was which. In Chicago, five people pegged the wild correctly. <br /><br />The Oregonian invited 22 people -- five of them chefs -- to put on blindfolds, taste the two types of fish side by side and answer three questions: which is which, which do you like more, and why. <br /><br />We put panels together in two areas of the country, figuring that salmon-savvy Northwesterners might have an easier time picking out taste differences than those who live thousands of miles from the Pacific. <br /><br />That presumption turned out to be, well, presumptuous. <br /><br />But first the ground rules: <br /><br />Each tasting panel consisted of 11 tasters -- three chefs or food professionals and eight "regulars" (people who eat fish regularly and prepare it at home). The fillets of Chilean-farmed salmon and troll-caught Oregon chinook were caught on the same day, came from the same place (Newman's Fish Co. in Portland) and arrived at both venues the same morning. <br /><br />The salmon was kept out of tasters' view by the chefs who prepared it -- in Chicago, Michael Tsonton at Eli's, The Place for Steak; and in the Portland area, Gary Puetz, a national seafood consultant and professional chef based in Washougal, Wash. And in both kitchens, the salmon got equal treatment: basted lightly with unsalted butter, seasoned with salt and pepper and baked at 400 degrees in a convection oven "until the inside was just opaque," says Puetz. <br /><br />Each participant donned an "official" blindfold (black mask with covered eyeholes), and tasted the two types of salmon, with water to clear the palate in between. <br /><br />The results caught some of the tasters by surprise. <br /><br />More preferred the wild salmon in both cities -- but only by a slim margin. In Portland, six of the 11 tasters voted for wild. In Chicago, seven of the 11 preferred wild to farmed, with one saying the two fish tasted about the same. The pros voted much like the rest: Of the five chefs at the blind tastings, three preferred the wild salmon. <br /><br />And out of 22 tasters, eight correctly guessed which salmon was which. That's more than one-third who got it right, but . . . two of the ones who didn't were chefs. <br /><br />What conclusions to draw from this? <br /><br />First, that fish preference is in the mouth of the beholder. That some fish palates, like wine palates, may be more developed than others. And that maybe there's not as big of a difference in the two types of fish as some people might believe. <br /><br />As Nancy Burns, a Chicago video editor who preferred farmed salmon, put it, "I'm having a hard time disconnecting my food brain from my political brain." <br /><br />Burns and two other Chicagoans -- both chefs -- gave the nod to farmed fish, saying it had richer flavor. "The (wild) king salmon tasted like a nice, pleasant piece of fish. But I didn't really get any flavor of noble struggle and appropriate fish-chosen diet off it," says Burns. "I was expecting a more peak experience." <br /><br />Meanwhile, a few seats away, dietitian Nancy Barrett had an epiphany. The wild salmon, she says, "seemed to have more layers and flavor and just was so much more interesting to taste." She likened it to the complexity of a raw-milk cheese compared with one made with pasteurized milk. "It honestly kind of shocks me that there were people who couldn't tell the difference." <br /><br />Six other Chicago tasters agreed. <br /><br />Wild salmon has a stronger, richer, oilier flavor, says Howard Johnson, a national seafood marketing consultant based in Jacksonville, Ore., probably because of what it eats, and the amount of work it takes to get it. Some people like it, others prefer milder fish. And because 4 out of 5 pounds of salmon consumed in the United States is farmed, people might be more accustomed to those milder flavors. Even in the Northwest. <br /><br />The Portland tasters who preferred the wild fish talked about its "deep" flavors and "more fish taste." But most people -- including the two chefs on the panel -- say the choices weren't that far apart. <br /><br />This is not always the case, depending on the time of year. <br /><br />Generally, from November through February, when wild salmon is out of season, what's available at the store has probably been frozen, while farmed fish is available fresh year-round. People who eat a lot of wild fish might also detect subtle taste and color differences between salmon caught off the Oregon coast up to Alaska, which eats mostly herring, and fish from farther south that eats more krill, says Dwight Collins of Newman's. And the characteristic "sweetness" of ocean salmon might not be there as the chinook move into the spawning cycle in the fall, he adds. <br /><br />Farmed fish might be a blander eating experience, but it's consistent year-round, from fillet to fillet. And in our early August tasting, it kept even our professionals guessing. <br /><br />"It was a very subtle difference," says Ronnie Macquarrie, chef at Portland's Southpark, who chose the wild salmon but wasn't certain which fish was which. "Philippe (Boulot, of The Heathman Restaurant) and I were talking and, when you don't get to see it, it makes a difference. You can kind of tell by looking at the color before and after it's cooked. When you only get to taste it, it's harder to judge it." <br /><br />The flesh of farm-raised salmon is slightly pale and orange versus the red or dark-pumpkin tones of wild salmon, and the fat lines (in farmed) "are consistently more pronounced," says Puetz, the chef who cooked the salmon for the Portland panel. <br /><br />Even a few experts had trouble telling the two apart, and some were surprised when the blindfolds came off. <br /><br />Will Eudy, chef at Shaw's Crab House in Chicago, preferred the farm-raised, although he normally eats wild salmon and says that farmed is "kind of generic tasting." <br /><br />"If that was farm-raised salmon, that was very good salmon. Coming from me, that's against all of my philosophy (about salmon) and all of the philosophy we have here at Shaw's. We don't use farm-raised fish." Jamie Almerico, saucier chef at Tin Fish in Chicago, also preferred the farmed because the texture was smoother. <br /><br />Burns, the Chicago video editor, called the wild salmon "downright mushy." <br /><br />Any texture difference, says Johnson, the seafood consultant, could be because the wild salmon sometimes "suffers a little more abuse" between ocean and plate. "It doesn't change the taste of anything, but it can give you a little softer piece of meat." Tight quality controls on fish farms keep the salmon consistent, if sometimes bland. <br /><br />Even Bill Long, a sport fisherman in Portland who only eats wild salmon, says he was "somewhat thrown" by the farmed fish, which had a firm texture he associates with wild Pacific salmon. "But it had no taste whatsoever." <br /><br />Eudy and another chef at the Chicago tasting, Michael Altenberg of Campagnola in Evanston and Bistro Campagne in Chicago, thought the fish was overcooked, which would mask the flavors, Eudy says. At his restaurant, Eudy serves salmon medium-rare. <br /><br />John Lynch, an instructor at Oregon Health & Science University who cooks salmon for his family once a week and picked the farmed over the wild, took a different lesson from the tasting. He now figures that where the salmon comes from is less important to how it tastes than other factors, like how it's been cooked or how fresh it is. "I thought the wild salmon and the farmed salmon were both really, really good." <br /><br />Foodies in Oregon might also want to consider their preconceptions about Chicagoans' food sophistication. <br /><br />"How about it?" jokes Phyllis Grimm, an attorney who picked the wild salmon hands-down. "We're a little more sophisticated than you thought. Just because we live in the heartland doesn't mean we don't know our stuff." <br /><br />Puetz, who says he was a little surprised the wild salmon "didn't walk away with all the marbles" in Oregon, chalks it up to fish fatigue. Many people on the West Coast eat salmon a couple of times a week, especially in summer, he says. "If you eat fish all the time, your taste buds are a little bit jaded, a little bit confused." <br /><br />Not so, says Chicago chef Altenberg. Wild salmon is "definitely not available as much here," but the cleaner, true salmon flavor and firmer flesh of the wild fish is easy to discern if you're accustomed to noticing the subtleties of food. <br /><br />"I don't think it has anything to do with coastal qualities," he says. To not know the difference is like "not being able to tell an heirloom tomato from a hothouse tube tomato." <br /><br />Farmed or wild, wild or farmed. From both sides of the fence, the taste difference comes down to good and better. <br /><br />"I like farm-raised salmon -- I think it's delicious," says Barrett, the Chicago dietitian. "But wild salmon is more delicious." <br /><br />Leslie Cole: 503-294-4069; lesliecole@news.oregonian.com
<br /><br />I was also told with farm fed Atlantic Salmon, the meat isn't as dark as the wild, so they color dye them. Talking about faking a salmon from its natural color! 
