Foodstuff: Crisp Fish Skin – Un Chi Brand™ | Sybaritica

When I grill or fry Salmon or Arctic Char, I usually leave the skin on and cook it so it gets nice and crispy. A few times, I have even cooked the skin separately from the rest of the fish as it makes a lovely snack but, until I found this package at Kowloon Market in Ottawa I had no idea that a commercially packaged variety was available … 

Here you can see the product in a closer view. It is produced by the DongGuan Un Da Food Co. in Hong Kong and, in addition to the ‘Aromatic Peppery Flavor’ that I purchased, it seems they do a ‘Regular’ as well as ‘Tomato’ and at least one other sort. It was unfortunate that only this flavor was available when I bought this bag. I would really like to try the unflavored sort as I wasn’t sure I liked the seasonings on this one…

The Ingredients list Fish Skin, Wheat Flour, Vegetable Oil, Pepper, Chili Powder and something called ‘Flavor Enhancer’. Usually, this last ingredient means MSG but this doesn’t appear to be the case here as there is a definite ‘perfume’ like quality to the taste that is a bit reminiscent of Galanga. Normally, I like that flavor but I don’t think it works well here. Fortunately, that element of theexperience is not too dominant and, aside from this, the taste is very much like a less pungent version of the Indian Bombay Duck.

The package suggests that you enjoy the product as a snack food and urges you to open the bag and ‘put one in your mouth to enjoy the fun’. Personally, I didn’t experience much in the way of fun when I tried them, but I did like it on the whole and I can see that these, especially the plain ones, would go very nicely with beer.

The package also suggests that you try adding the ‘crackers’ to soup, although it specifies that you should do so only 3 – 5 seconds before eating (presumably to avoid the product becoming too soggy). I tried this (as you see above) and put some in a little chicken broth with some scallion. On the whole, the effect was quite nice but I also really like the texture of the skin after it sat in the stock for a few minutes. It ‘reconstituted’ itself an became quite thick and silky.

Before making the soup, my wife wondered aloud whether the skin should be crumbled into the soup rather than left in whole pieces. While I don’t think that this is intended, it did strike me that the crumbled product would be great, either alone or with other ingredients, as a Furikake type sprinkle for rice. One could, in addition, also crumble it over a curry much like the aforementioned Bombay Duck.

Anyway … I really hope to come across the plain type some point as I think this would, in addition to being a nice snack, be handy to have on hand for a variety of culinary purposes. Have any of my readers tried this yet?

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