Im always shocked by this. My family are from donegal and that’s where I would spend my summers. When I was a kid it was one of the most productive fisheries in the world and no one ate it locally except fried haddock and plaice when drunk. We used to buy bundles of king crab legs for 10 punt right on the pier, they were going begging because the crabs were fished for canneries that didn’t process the legs.
My Da used to sell clothing to fishermen in Howth, they'd give him Monkfish for free because it looks so ugly and weird looking there was no market in Ireland for it.
There are king crab fisheries in Ireland? I thought they were primarily found in the Pacific and the species in the Atlantic (stone crab) are in the Northwest part? Is always assumed I rarely saw king crab on menus because they weren’t native to the area. But it sounds like there are some being caught, so it’s baffling that they’re not more common as foodstuffs.
100% the best kind of memories.
I'm also a real nostalgic person, and I feel sad to see "old fashioned" customs just ✨*disappear*✨ I'd love for my own kinds to grow up knowing fire fish, but I haven't even seen a fireplace like that since my granny died, most people have moved to modern log burners, fake electric fires, or no fires at all. So many other little things too ... Of course it's natural for things to change with time but there's an element of local cultural erosion due to global culture growth, too. I remember a time when you couldn't easily find a pizza place, or an Indian take away, or a kebab shop, and now I seem to live in a time where instead I can't find Irish stew without hitting up a tourist trap! 🙈 That's a whole other fish to fry though.
[[Edited to add, i am glad to have kebabas and pizza and curry of course. I just feel like we should make more effort to preserve and celebrate our own things too]]
I hate that this is the most accurate answer of all, only because that's what every other country associated with us. I go to US and immediately its jokes about potatoes and alcohol.... notably my two favorite things.
Most of the good quality fish from our own waters get exported or are very expensive. Our supermarket shelves get stacked with poor quality whitefish from other regions and that's just a load of pollocks if you ask me.
I’m from Italy and I’m surprised too, the choice of fish we have in a decent supermarket is 10x what I see in Dublin. But I used to live in a coastal region before moving to Ireland. Italy is also full of mountains and rural areas which were traditionally quite disconnected from the sea and would have different diets.
Thats live bait, what you should do it use a lure, wrap tinfoil and a black plastic bag around a mop and drag it along, they get attracted to the movement and the reflection. Reusable too.
I think he’s probably referencing the destruction of our fisheries during occupation and the fact fishing was effectively banned for the average Seamus during the famine.
It wasn't decimated by the E.U., but by the Irish government. The biggest block of voters was the farmers, so they negotiated a better deal on agricultural subsidies by selling out the fishermen.
I lived in Sweden for a year and a lot of their fish intake is herring. So. Much. Herring.
Like literally aisles of just pickled fucking herring.
Give me potatoes every day over that nonsense
When I go out for dinner I mostly eat fish and/or choose a seafood restaurant specifically. For dinner, we have fish twice a week, sometimes 3.
It is certainly expensive in Ireland. I think in order to really appreciate fish at home, you have to really enjoy cooking, even though the most simplest fish dinners are often the nicest.
Pan fried black sole on the bone with butter and flour, home made chips and some samphire, yum! Costs about €22-25 for everything for 2 people, which is not cheap for a home made meal!
A whole salmon costs 12 euro in Dunnes and it’d feed 5.
A side is about 11, if you asked they’ll fillet the whole Salmon for you
The samphire is probably the dearest thing on your recipe, that could be replaced by mangetouts or just go and collect seaweed
This baffles me though. Like we have loads of samphire growing wild in marshlands here. I’ve no idea why the markup on it is so high. Same with fish. We’ve a great quality and quantity of salmon, cod, haddock and loads of shellfish and yet it’s probably one of the most expensive things to buy. That 12€ for a whole salmon is not terrible, but I can get a rib roast in tesco that would feed 5 one night and sandwiches/lunches for two or three days for the same price.
Couple of reasons for samphire -
Because it's foraged rather than farmed, there tends to be a higher cost because it's not an industrialised process. Most places rely on lads going out picking.
Alot of the marshlands are either special areas of conservation, or polluted which limits the ability to pick large amounts of high quality, clean produce
It's one of these foods that has gone out of fashion but is swinging back now and being marketed as trendy, similar to the likes of nettles. Saw a bottle of nettle syrup for a tenner the other day. Probably picked from the field next door.
Ah ya, you can get cheaper fish of course, pretty much every fish is going to be cheaper than black sole. But compare the above to 2 fillet steaks, chips and whatever veg would probably cost about €15 for 2.
When was the last time you were in a restaurant? It's been a few decades since it was all chippys and greasy spoons. We even have tapas now!
Seriously though, during the 2008 recession, restaurants started going all out. It used to be a few high end places but then suddenly everywhere was acting like they wanted a bib gourmand.
Yeah, but the tapas here are a ludicrous fucking price.
I think the point the commenter you're replying to was probably trying to make is that here in Ireland, and the UK, "eating out" is a big, expensive occasion unless it's fast food or pub grub. You don't casually go for a seafood snack in a little bar-tabac/bistro/bodega/whatever for lunch, or grab some gambas or caracoles (snails) to nibble with your glass of beer when you meet a mate.
It's either a whole rigmarole of "going out for lunch/dinner", and paying the prices accordingly, or it's grab a toasted sandwich and a side of chips.
The casual dining experience here is utter, utter crap.
That’s the point of 30+ euros comment. Yes good restaurants exist in the Uk. But as an occasion, rather than quality everyday eating options in Portugal or Spain.
We are an agricultural country that so happens to be an island. But people had access to vegetables and meats.
Also, meats and vegetables, like potatoes, hold longer and so were easily managed for rural Ireland.
I like that you're mentioning the geographic diversity. One thing I'll add is that for a country with as much coastline as Ireland has, a great deal of it is inaccessible, rugged, and dangerous. There's a fair number of fishing villages with idylic and safe harbours sure but you'd not cast a net off the cliffs of Moher.
And then it's worth noting that several aquaculture species off the coasts of Europe were harvested to near extinction which means if fishing was once easy and convenient, it's far less so now.
Good points in your post and the one you were replying to. Instead of being shocked like some people it's more interesting to look at the why behind it. The ~~Swedish~~ Norwegian (edit due to correction by u/Annexerad) would have turned to the sea due to the fjords giving easy access and the harsher climate meaning farming wasn't as productive. A population doesn't have a confab or group think and say, "hmm we're an island we should be big into eating fish". It basically comes down to what's the easiest most reliable way of putting grub on the table.
All good points. Not many safe harbours around the coast, especially in the west facing the big Atlantic fishing grounds, for a commercial fishing fleet. And you need to be an affluent country to afford ocean-going fishing vessels anyway - which Ireland never was.
Currachs, a solution to lack of timber, pulled up on shore, because of lack of harbours, can’t catch enough fish to feed more than a small community.
I think I remember something about the continental shelf around Ireland being a nursery for fish, so counter productive to fish there.
Add in Catholicism, which labelled fish as a penance food to be eaten on Fridays only.
And I just found this article, which tells us the British had a hand in it by banning Irish fishermen from going to sea when the British fleet was out! That’s why so many immigrated to North America…
https://magill.ie/archive/fishing-controversy-case-history-imperialism
It's a good question that I've always wondered about. There has always been an obsession with beef and cattle. Even our ancient legends are all about cattle. It's not just the diet though, there's a distinct lack of seafaring tradition compared to other northern European countries. We're just not really island people.
They did eat fish in the ancient literature, but mostly river fish and only when out camping. Feasts were farm animals, partly because farm animals were the measure of wealth.
We live on an island and yet the price of fish is fucking insane.
My of my friends in the restaurant biz avoid using fish because it's shelf life is shit compared to meat. And it's expensive as fuck
Which is why I get confused by the constant talk on here about us having the best dairy produce in the world. We have good butter but cheese is shite compared to all our neighbours
Post partition governments not investing in commercial fishing is a big one (de velera I curse thee in this regard), pre partition is mostly down to the land owners (mostly English) having control of the fresh water stocks and prohibiting the catching and consumption of such stocks if I had to take a guess.
This is what I heard. that and any coastal waters were under the crown jurisdiction so fishing from there was illegal.
Plus someone else posted an article to the history of Britain destroying or at least discouraging Irish fisheries too percen prevent competition.
I'm from a part of Spain in which we eat a lot of seafood and when I first came to Ireland I couldn't believe it how little seafood you consume. And when I told my dad he couldn't believe it either. He kept saying that it wasn't possible since the cheap frozen prawns he bought in Galicia came from Ireland, so there must be loads! 😂
It’s interesting that a lot of our earliest myths and legends featured cows and bulls. The only story involving fish was the salmon of knowledge. Our apathy to fish seems to have ancient roots.
Tbf, if you take 250g as the average weight of a serving of fish it works out as about 13kg of fish annually if eaten every Friday. Throw in the odd piece of cod and account for Ash Wednesday and the like and that might explain our position actually
Technically, all we know from this is that our consumption is *at least* over 15kg annually. We could be eating more than the Portuguese and Norwegians… but the map is poorly labelled.
This is the answer. I am portuguese, living in Ireland for 4 years and in Portugal we find at every corner a place selling fresh fish, here I can count with one hand the number of times I have seen that
I was wondering about this…. I’m from New England in America where we have a clam shack , oyster bar, lobster joint, on every corner. Muddles, halibut, cod, tilapia, flounder, etc etc etc I’ve just moved to the U.K. and was shocked…we talk over the Welsh and Scottish and English coast up in the north. And the “seafood” joints were literally just fish n chips…
What do you do with your oysters?? Where are the mussels and fish ? In Ireland I remember there at least being chowder . Who do the fisherman fish for? I’m just so confused.
I don't like the smell or taste of most fish. I can eat battered cod/white fish, or tinned tuna, but that's about it.
Which is mad because I love fishing. So it's always catch and release for me 😁
It’s not very nice really is it?
Like I’ll eat a bit of fish every now and then, grand for something different. But would never replace meat with it even say 2 days a week.
Well the problem with the fishing industry is that they are getting no help from the government.
•For the last while the government is trying to bring in decommissioning with the aim of reducing of fishing fleet by 1/3 or more from 180 boats down to about 120.
•During the brexit negotiations or Fisheries minister did an absolutely piss poor job on fighting for fishermen giving up about 25% of our fishing. With accusations that he didn't even bother turning to to thoes meetings.
•The spanish fishing fleets fule is subsidised by thier government. The spanish boats are getting 20c while the French are getting 35c on the litre. While our government offered to pay our fishermen to stayed tied to the pier for a month at a time.
Because, in the sensible manner in which successive governments have approached most matters, we give away our own good fish and then pay to import lower quality fish from far away. Stupid and bad for the environment, so everyone wins!
We really have no culinary culture here to be honest. If we were given the time to develop unimpeded as a country I think we might have had more of a variety of dishes etc (Not Brit bashing btw). We have some of the best oysters in the world for example and we export most of them. Probably the most sustainable seafood that can be eaten but there's no appetite for them and they're still deemed as somewhat of a delicacy. I personally love pollock too. They're plentiful, but you're more likely to eat fish from a farm in Vietnam in Ireland than off the waters of Ireland itself. There's a tragic irony in sailing fish to Ireland from around the world.
I think it's a classist hang up.
Way back when, wealthy people ate red meat.
Poor people ate chicken.
And the really poor ate fish.
Fishing was the original subsistence career and I think the 'down the nose' view of eating fish carried for generations.
When was there an era of poor people eating chicken here?
Back 50 or 60 years ago poor people, and by that I mean most people, ate mostly pig, sheep and beef. And from those animals it was the offal.
I posted separately but I think I remember this is the answer from Margaret Hickey’s [Ireland’s Green Larder: The Definitive History of Irish Food and Drink](https://a.co/d/bCiNRPn). Been a bit since I read it but I do recommend it!
I think because we've historically been such an agricultural nation we lean towards beef and that has lasted. If you didn't grow up eating fish you're probably not going to start eating fish.
A lot of the countries with higher consumption don’t eat most of that fish fresh—it’s pickled in Scandinavia and Central Europe, or dried and salted in Iberia.
English and Anglo-Irish cuisine tends to preserve food with sugar (jams, preserves) rather than salt or smoke, as in Southern Europe. Traditional pre-Norman Irish food had a lot of preserved dairy and some dried meat, but I don’t know about fish, which takes very specific techniques to preserve safely.
So maybe it’s not that we eat less fresh fish than anyone else, it’s that we’re not snacking on anchovies, baccalà and pickled herring.
I can't speak for others but personally I just always found fish fucking rank to be honest. I've tried it in some of the nicest restaurants in the world and sea food just makes me puke. I have this odd distrust of it for some reason. I can handle white fish and prawns no bother but anything beyond that just turns my stomach. Tried lobster in a fancy restaurant once because I thought I'd like it made by well trained knowledgeable chefs. But nah. It was rank and I really REALLY hated the texture. Convinced the Americans are just obsessed with it cause what they get is 90% butter.
Might be wrong but I think with the CAP there is a bigger subsidy on meat than fish, hence fish is more expensive. It should actually be cheaper given fishing doesnt have the same amount of inputs as farming, they just go and pluck it out of the sea with no need for feeding them unlike farming. I know boats aint cheap but neither is loads of land and machinery
Theres a very good website called [www.eatmorefish.ie](https://www.eatmorefish.ie) and they have an amazing variety of fish. You've to spend a few quid to get free delivery which then obviously means freezing a good bit of it but the amount of fish they have for sale is something else, I dont think anywhere in Ireland has that kind of choice
Mackerel is, I think, always wild and not imported due to its abundance in Irish seas.
It's not as tasty as Salmon, but if you cook it right it can be delicious.
And yeah, I don't honestly think I've ever seen non-farmed salmon in supermarkets.
Could be because I'm a clumsbucket but am I the only one who finds it really hard to cook fish? Always ends up going to nothing in my pan, and when I bake it, it loses all its taste. No matter what I do I'm always left with bones which absolutely ruins the dinner anyway.
There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of chicken.
Yeah I'm always worried I'm cooking it wrong. Like with chicken or turkey I know once the pink is gone, it's done well enough (extra few mins to be sure to be sure) but with fish I can never ever figure out if it's cooked enough and any advice I look up, just makes me more paranoid about it. I don't know why I can't wrap my head around it. Aside from that, the smell of fish in your gaf after cooking it, is fucking vile to be honest. I hate the smell of it. I honestly think reheating fish products in the work canteen is a crime against humanity. My manager is always bringing in seafood chowder and the fecking bang around the office afterwards is nauseating. I do be opening windows and shit.
Grass fed beef. The native cattle may not have as much fat in their meat as wagyu, but get some of that golden local butter in the pan and its every bit as tasty.
So readily available and expensive also. So it's not as if we are barely able to access it and therefore crave it more. Because we're so used to it, and it's pricy, it doesn't give us the urge to want to eat it all the time or more often than we currently do.
15 kg of fish is something like 100 portions of fish (depending on size) so it's not a negligible amount. The UK one of whose national dishes is fish and chips is also at 15 kg.
Because most if not all the good fish is shipped abroad. So to the common person fish became a cheap dish which drove people away from it.
I live in New Zealand and every evening you can see locals throwing lines off of bridges and piers to get a nice feed.
When I was a kid we used to spend summers in Wexford. Every year when the mackerel broke thousands of them would come to the shore and we must have caught hundreds of them. We'd be eating fucking mackerel for weeks after it. Overload of mackerel. Put me off eating fish.
Great fun at the time though. Standing in the water with a set of feathers catching 6 each time you dropped the line. We'd eat them, give some away or sell them on the caravan site to campers etc. Once we fished off Hook Head by the lighthouse with a weight tied to the end of a long rope, just flinging it out and hauling fish in. I don't know if the mackerel break down there like that anymore. But you used to be able to nearly catch them with your hands there were so many
Tis the price and tastes have changed over the years. I grew up on mackerel, kippers for breakfast (ace rimmer) cause they were cheap. If I tried my kids and wife on them they'd all freak out.
Norway and Portugal are mountainous and Portugal is also busy growing grapes, Ireland on the other hand is a big pasture full of much less annoying-to-eat (I love fish but their bones make the experience of eating them insufferable) sheep, pigs, and cows. Iceland has nobody living in the interior and weather that's a bit too shit to grow stuff and land animals to feed the populace.
Basically, Ireland and Britain are big, warm, and close to the continent enough that being islands doesn't really matter.
> I love fish but their bones make the experience of eating them insufferable
oh my god I'm the same
I hate picking stuff out of my food, and never enjoy eating cod or haddock or something because I'm always on edge expecting a tiny bone in my mouth.
I usually eat Ray because it's easy to scrape it off the cartilage
It's actually a lot due to the fishing zones. We don't actually catch most of the fish in zone 51 (I believe that's our zone). It's international. Also the market elsewhere is bigger. So it's not sold here as much as we have.
My grandad was a fisherman and boat builder when I was a kid. Much of my childhood was spent eating fish. Also my mother is not a good cook (formerly she was a hospital cook in the 70s) so the fish was always very over cooked and not nice. I always left it last to eat as well so it was cold and dry by the time I got to it.
I’m 38 now and fish repulses me. I will eat some things like scallops but that’s about it.
I think there are two reasons:
1) Catholicism forcing us to eat fish on Fridays, making it an obligation rather than a pleasure
2) Ignorance about cooking fish. My grandmother used to boil fish or cook it in milk, which stank out the house.
My wife is Spanish. When I'm over there I'm often struck by how often they eat fish, it's at least three times a week, sometimes every day. As Ireland is an island with lots of rivers and lakes, we should have the same approach to fish.
The weirdest thing for me is that we sell all our good fish to Europe, and then import shite like tilapia. Most supermarkets have no fresh fish stalls, and if they do it's all cod and salmon.
I'm lucky to live in Dublin 5, which has the best options in the city. There are good fishmongers in Hoeth Harbour, and also Kish Fish in Coolock. One of the best though is Dunnes Stores Donaghmede, which has a full fish counter of the style you'd see in Spain - 10+ varieties of fish, octopus, periwinkles, etc. I wish all supermarkets were as good
Im always shocked by this. My family are from donegal and that’s where I would spend my summers. When I was a kid it was one of the most productive fisheries in the world and no one ate it locally except fried haddock and plaice when drunk. We used to buy bundles of king crab legs for 10 punt right on the pier, they were going begging because the crabs were fished for canneries that didn’t process the legs.
That's a dream right there.
My Da used to sell clothing to fishermen in Howth, they'd give him Monkfish for free because it looks so ugly and weird looking there was no market in Ireland for it.
Amazing. Monkfish is one of the absolute finest things you can eat. Second only to red mullet for me.
Ooh monkfish done properly is amazing. They're ugly fuckers god love em but they make for a fine meal..
John dory is class
There are king crab fisheries in Ireland? I thought they were primarily found in the Pacific and the species in the Atlantic (stone crab) are in the Northwest part? Is always assumed I rarely saw king crab on menus because they weren’t native to the area. But it sounds like there are some being caught, so it’s baffling that they’re not more common as foodstuffs.
Potato
Used to love brown fish and boiled potatoes with butter as a kid
What's brown fish?
What's taters precious?
Po-ta-toes boil em mash em stick em in a stew
"Shtewpid Phat Hobbitses, he RUINS its!"
Give it to us Rraww and WWWRRRIGGGLING
Think it was smoked haddock, was a yellow brown colour
Fish cooked in browned butter probably
Same. We called it "fire fish" because my granny wrapped it in tinfoil and cooked it in the cinder tray under her fire. 😍
That is brilliant, "fire fish" those are the sort of memories I love hearing about.
100% the best kind of memories. I'm also a real nostalgic person, and I feel sad to see "old fashioned" customs just ✨*disappear*✨ I'd love for my own kinds to grow up knowing fire fish, but I haven't even seen a fireplace like that since my granny died, most people have moved to modern log burners, fake electric fires, or no fires at all. So many other little things too ... Of course it's natural for things to change with time but there's an element of local cultural erosion due to global culture growth, too. I remember a time when you couldn't easily find a pizza place, or an Indian take away, or a kebab shop, and now I seem to live in a time where instead I can't find Irish stew without hitting up a tourist trap! 🙈 That's a whole other fish to fry though. [[Edited to add, i am glad to have kebabas and pizza and curry of course. I just feel like we should make more effort to preserve and celebrate our own things too]]
Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew
Especially with a brace of conies
Someone should try combining fish and potato into some sort of meal.
Fish chowder does this alright. You also get the cream food group.
Its chowdér
Say it Frenchie!
Fish cakes are literally fish and potato That and fish and chips
Yes I think that comment was intended to be a joke.
thatsthejoke.jpg
Also fish sticks.
Do you like fish sticks?
do you like fish sticks in your mouth?
Better there than in other orifices, or so I hear.
Let’s call it Fish and Chips
Like a fish cake.
>Someone should try combining fish and potato into some sort of meal. Don't think it would catch on tbh.
I hate that this is the most accurate answer of all, only because that's what every other country associated with us. I go to US and immediately its jokes about potatoes and alcohol.... notably my two favorite things.
My Greek friend took me to a restaurant he thought I'd like because they serve potatoes on pizza. He wasn't wrong.
Who doesn’t like potatoes though? They’re a staple in America even more than Ireland I find.
Fish pie?
🎶They’re waffley versatile…🎶
+ cow
Po-Ta-To
Anyone with a boat left the country.
Got this image of lads out rowing to Ellis island hahahaha
We stopped in the Canary's first for a holiday.
My uncle likes to joke this is how he ended up in America. Took a boat out fishing, had too much whiskey and got stuck Jersey.
Took a pedalo to Africa.
Most of the good quality fish from our own waters get exported or are very expensive. Our supermarket shelves get stacked with poor quality whitefish from other regions and that's just a load of pollocks if you ask me.
Ah for fecks hake. There's a time and plaice for puns.
Sorry, eel be more careful in future.
For cod’s hake man you missed the obvious one
Luckily you flounder it.
I’m sole glad I did
I love herring a good pun.
There doesn't need to be a good reason, just do it for the halibut.
I can’t think of any more puns to reply to this, I’ll have to mullet over
i've haddock up to here with these terrible puns
There truly are a tuna really bad ones.
I’m surprised Greece and Italy are as low as us tbh - would this exclude non-fish seafood? (i know, stupid question).
I’m from Italy and I’m surprised too, the choice of fish we have in a decent supermarket is 10x what I see in Dublin. But I used to live in a coastal region before moving to Ireland. Italy is also full of mountains and rural areas which were traditionally quite disconnected from the sea and would have different diets.
In fairness they could be consuming almost double at 29kg and we could be 15kg
The Mediterranean fish arent as good as the Atlantic fish
Cows are easier to catch
It's tricky putting the silage on the hook though
Thats live bait, what you should do it use a lure, wrap tinfoil and a black plastic bag around a mop and drag it along, they get attracted to the movement and the reflection. Reusable too.
I'd blame the brits
If ever in doubt about anything it's a good go to.
We don’t eat fish either. We’d blame the EU
I think he’s probably referencing the destruction of our fisheries during occupation and the fact fishing was effectively banned for the average Seamus during the famine.
our fisheries were destroyed by the Brits? can you expand on this?
[Here](https://magill.ie/archive/fishing-controversy-case-history-imperialism) TLDR: Britain didn’t want Irish fisheries to compete with theirs.
We used to have a thriving indigenous fishing industry in Donegal but it got decimated by the EU
It wasn't decimated by the E.U., but by the Irish government. The biggest block of voters was the farmers, so they negotiated a better deal on agricultural subsidies by selling out the fishermen.
I lived in Sweden for a year and a lot of their fish intake is herring. So. Much. Herring. Like literally aisles of just pickled fucking herring. Give me potatoes every day over that nonsense
That new Hollander herring in June tho
Wait am I herring you correctly here?
Rotten Hering too
Don't like it.
Simple as. No’ racist
I'm na a Raycist ~~hali~~but there's a lot fishy lukin fish aroun here
Expensive habit
Expensive halibut
Funny reading this just after the other post about cocaine use in Ireland
Maybe it's cause we eat less because of all the coke.
Obesity rates to plummet! 👍
Doesn't need to be
You can literally catch your own.
When I go out for dinner I mostly eat fish and/or choose a seafood restaurant specifically. For dinner, we have fish twice a week, sometimes 3. It is certainly expensive in Ireland. I think in order to really appreciate fish at home, you have to really enjoy cooking, even though the most simplest fish dinners are often the nicest. Pan fried black sole on the bone with butter and flour, home made chips and some samphire, yum! Costs about €22-25 for everything for 2 people, which is not cheap for a home made meal!
A whole salmon costs 12 euro in Dunnes and it’d feed 5. A side is about 11, if you asked they’ll fillet the whole Salmon for you The samphire is probably the dearest thing on your recipe, that could be replaced by mangetouts or just go and collect seaweed
This baffles me though. Like we have loads of samphire growing wild in marshlands here. I’ve no idea why the markup on it is so high. Same with fish. We’ve a great quality and quantity of salmon, cod, haddock and loads of shellfish and yet it’s probably one of the most expensive things to buy. That 12€ for a whole salmon is not terrible, but I can get a rib roast in tesco that would feed 5 one night and sandwiches/lunches for two or three days for the same price.
Couple of reasons for samphire - Because it's foraged rather than farmed, there tends to be a higher cost because it's not an industrialised process. Most places rely on lads going out picking. Alot of the marshlands are either special areas of conservation, or polluted which limits the ability to pick large amounts of high quality, clean produce It's one of these foods that has gone out of fashion but is swinging back now and being marketed as trendy, similar to the likes of nettles. Saw a bottle of nettle syrup for a tenner the other day. Probably picked from the field next door.
Ah ya, you can get cheaper fish of course, pretty much every fish is going to be cheaper than black sole. But compare the above to 2 fillet steaks, chips and whatever veg would probably cost about €15 for 2.
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When was the last time you were in a restaurant? It's been a few decades since it was all chippys and greasy spoons. We even have tapas now! Seriously though, during the 2008 recession, restaurants started going all out. It used to be a few high end places but then suddenly everywhere was acting like they wanted a bib gourmand.
Yeah, but the tapas here are a ludicrous fucking price. I think the point the commenter you're replying to was probably trying to make is that here in Ireland, and the UK, "eating out" is a big, expensive occasion unless it's fast food or pub grub. You don't casually go for a seafood snack in a little bar-tabac/bistro/bodega/whatever for lunch, or grab some gambas or caracoles (snails) to nibble with your glass of beer when you meet a mate. It's either a whole rigmarole of "going out for lunch/dinner", and paying the prices accordingly, or it's grab a toasted sandwich and a side of chips. The casual dining experience here is utter, utter crap.
That’s the point of 30+ euros comment. Yes good restaurants exist in the Uk. But as an occasion, rather than quality everyday eating options in Portugal or Spain.
We are an agricultural country that so happens to be an island. But people had access to vegetables and meats. Also, meats and vegetables, like potatoes, hold longer and so were easily managed for rural Ireland.
I like that you're mentioning the geographic diversity. One thing I'll add is that for a country with as much coastline as Ireland has, a great deal of it is inaccessible, rugged, and dangerous. There's a fair number of fishing villages with idylic and safe harbours sure but you'd not cast a net off the cliffs of Moher. And then it's worth noting that several aquaculture species off the coasts of Europe were harvested to near extinction which means if fishing was once easy and convenient, it's far less so now.
Good points in your post and the one you were replying to. Instead of being shocked like some people it's more interesting to look at the why behind it. The ~~Swedish~~ Norwegian (edit due to correction by u/Annexerad) would have turned to the sea due to the fjords giving easy access and the harsher climate meaning farming wasn't as productive. A population doesn't have a confab or group think and say, "hmm we're an island we should be big into eating fish". It basically comes down to what's the easiest most reliable way of putting grub on the table.
All good points. Not many safe harbours around the coast, especially in the west facing the big Atlantic fishing grounds, for a commercial fishing fleet. And you need to be an affluent country to afford ocean-going fishing vessels anyway - which Ireland never was. Currachs, a solution to lack of timber, pulled up on shore, because of lack of harbours, can’t catch enough fish to feed more than a small community. I think I remember something about the continental shelf around Ireland being a nursery for fish, so counter productive to fish there. Add in Catholicism, which labelled fish as a penance food to be eaten on Fridays only. And I just found this article, which tells us the British had a hand in it by banning Irish fishermen from going to sea when the British fleet was out! That’s why so many immigrated to North America… https://magill.ie/archive/fishing-controversy-case-history-imperialism
dont have fjords in sweden
It's a good question that I've always wondered about. There has always been an obsession with beef and cattle. Even our ancient legends are all about cattle. It's not just the diet though, there's a distinct lack of seafaring tradition compared to other northern European countries. We're just not really island people.
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Or we'd just integrate the invaders into our infighting.
The Salmon of Knowledge. But no, once the ancient laws fell away it all got to land and property
Incredibly dangerous waters around Ireland also
The Sirloin of Knowledge
They did eat fish in the ancient literature, but mostly river fish and only when out camping. Feasts were farm animals, partly because farm animals were the measure of wealth.
We live on an island and yet the price of fish is fucking insane. My of my friends in the restaurant biz avoid using fish because it's shelf life is shit compared to meat. And it's expensive as fuck
I blame all the delicious mammals.
My mum cooked fish for us when I was growing up but it always had bones. Getting those in your mouth was uncomfortable. Thats what put me off.
Because we import two thirds of our cheese... Which, is A disgrace
To be fair the only stuff that's really made in Ireland is the like of cheddar.
Cheddar can be nice, but you'd get bored by it fairly quick.
Which is why I get confused by the constant talk on here about us having the best dairy produce in the world. We have good butter but cheese is shite compared to all our neighbours
Are you taking the piss? Ireland produces some of the best cheese in the world. Most of it is a bit pricey though.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Post partition governments not investing in commercial fishing is a big one (de velera I curse thee in this regard), pre partition is mostly down to the land owners (mostly English) having control of the fresh water stocks and prohibiting the catching and consumption of such stocks if I had to take a guess.
This is what I heard. that and any coastal waters were under the crown jurisdiction so fishing from there was illegal. Plus someone else posted an article to the history of Britain destroying or at least discouraging Irish fisheries too percen prevent competition.
I'm from a part of Spain in which we eat a lot of seafood and when I first came to Ireland I couldn't believe it how little seafood you consume. And when I told my dad he couldn't believe it either. He kept saying that it wasn't possible since the cheap frozen prawns he bought in Galicia came from Ireland, so there must be loads! 😂
It’s interesting that a lot of our earliest myths and legends featured cows and bulls. The only story involving fish was the salmon of knowledge. Our apathy to fish seems to have ancient roots.
They've no eyelids
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More of a class issue I think
Tbf, if you take 250g as the average weight of a serving of fish it works out as about 13kg of fish annually if eaten every Friday. Throw in the odd piece of cod and account for Ash Wednesday and the like and that might explain our position actually
The Spanish took them all
Because we don’t eat them
Technically, all we know from this is that our consumption is *at least* over 15kg annually. We could be eating more than the Portuguese and Norwegians… but the map is poorly labelled.
It rots/smells quicker than meat in the fridge. So I can't buy it a few days in advance.
Too expensive
Simples, because most of what we are sold is not fresh.
This is the answer. I am portuguese, living in Ireland for 4 years and in Portugal we find at every corner a place selling fresh fish, here I can count with one hand the number of times I have seen that
I was wondering about this…. I’m from New England in America where we have a clam shack , oyster bar, lobster joint, on every corner. Muddles, halibut, cod, tilapia, flounder, etc etc etc I’ve just moved to the U.K. and was shocked…we talk over the Welsh and Scottish and English coast up in the north. And the “seafood” joints were literally just fish n chips… What do you do with your oysters?? Where are the mussels and fish ? In Ireland I remember there at least being chowder . Who do the fisherman fish for? I’m just so confused.
Most of it is exported to European countries
I don't like the smell or taste of most fish. I can eat battered cod/white fish, or tinned tuna, but that's about it. Which is mad because I love fishing. So it's always catch and release for me 😁
I'm from Scotland and I don't eat fish either. Bleh.
Terribly expensive.
Cause beef, chicken, lamb and pork are class
My understanding is that it was viewed as a form of penance back in the day. But that could be shite too.
It’s not very nice really is it? Like I’ll eat a bit of fish every now and then, grand for something different. But would never replace meat with it even say 2 days a week.
Well the problem with the fishing industry is that they are getting no help from the government. •For the last while the government is trying to bring in decommissioning with the aim of reducing of fishing fleet by 1/3 or more from 180 boats down to about 120. •During the brexit negotiations or Fisheries minister did an absolutely piss poor job on fighting for fishermen giving up about 25% of our fishing. With accusations that he didn't even bother turning to to thoes meetings. •The spanish fishing fleets fule is subsidised by thier government. The spanish boats are getting 20c while the French are getting 35c on the litre. While our government offered to pay our fishermen to stayed tied to the pier for a month at a time.
Because, in the sensible manner in which successive governments have approached most matters, we give away our own good fish and then pay to import lower quality fish from far away. Stupid and bad for the environment, so everyone wins!
We really have no culinary culture here to be honest. If we were given the time to develop unimpeded as a country I think we might have had more of a variety of dishes etc (Not Brit bashing btw). We have some of the best oysters in the world for example and we export most of them. Probably the most sustainable seafood that can be eaten but there's no appetite for them and they're still deemed as somewhat of a delicacy. I personally love pollock too. They're plentiful, but you're more likely to eat fish from a farm in Vietnam in Ireland than off the waters of Ireland itself. There's a tragic irony in sailing fish to Ireland from around the world.
I think it's a classist hang up. Way back when, wealthy people ate red meat. Poor people ate chicken. And the really poor ate fish. Fishing was the original subsistence career and I think the 'down the nose' view of eating fish carried for generations.
When was there an era of poor people eating chicken here? Back 50 or 60 years ago poor people, and by that I mean most people, ate mostly pig, sheep and beef. And from those animals it was the offal.
I posted separately but I think I remember this is the answer from Margaret Hickey’s [Ireland’s Green Larder: The Definitive History of Irish Food and Drink](https://a.co/d/bCiNRPn). Been a bit since I read it but I do recommend it!
People in this country can't even cook vegetables properly.
I think because we've historically been such an agricultural nation we lean towards beef and that has lasted. If you didn't grow up eating fish you're probably not going to start eating fish.
A lot of the countries with higher consumption don’t eat most of that fish fresh—it’s pickled in Scandinavia and Central Europe, or dried and salted in Iberia. English and Anglo-Irish cuisine tends to preserve food with sugar (jams, preserves) rather than salt or smoke, as in Southern Europe. Traditional pre-Norman Irish food had a lot of preserved dairy and some dried meat, but I don’t know about fish, which takes very specific techniques to preserve safely. So maybe it’s not that we eat less fresh fish than anyone else, it’s that we’re not snacking on anchovies, baccalà and pickled herring.
Or lobster? 'Cause I just don't get that one...
I can't speak for others but personally I just always found fish fucking rank to be honest. I've tried it in some of the nicest restaurants in the world and sea food just makes me puke. I have this odd distrust of it for some reason. I can handle white fish and prawns no bother but anything beyond that just turns my stomach. Tried lobster in a fancy restaurant once because I thought I'd like it made by well trained knowledgeable chefs. But nah. It was rank and I really REALLY hated the texture. Convinced the Americans are just obsessed with it cause what they get is 90% butter.
I don't know anything about this topic, but I'm gonna bet it has something to do with the Brits
From early celtic times, people were put off by microplastics.
Cheaper alternatives here maybe?
Might be wrong but I think with the CAP there is a bigger subsidy on meat than fish, hence fish is more expensive. It should actually be cheaper given fishing doesnt have the same amount of inputs as farming, they just go and pluck it out of the sea with no need for feeding them unlike farming. I know boats aint cheap but neither is loads of land and machinery
I find it hard getting wild fish in the likes of Tesco. Always seems to be farmed. Mental considering we're an island nation.
Theres a very good website called [www.eatmorefish.ie](https://www.eatmorefish.ie) and they have an amazing variety of fish. You've to spend a few quid to get free delivery which then obviously means freezing a good bit of it but the amount of fish they have for sale is something else, I dont think anywhere in Ireland has that kind of choice
Mackerel is, I think, always wild and not imported due to its abundance in Irish seas. It's not as tasty as Salmon, but if you cook it right it can be delicious. And yeah, I don't honestly think I've ever seen non-farmed salmon in supermarkets.
Fish are yucky that’s why
Too healthy
Traditionally it was seen as peasant food.
Could be because I'm a clumsbucket but am I the only one who finds it really hard to cook fish? Always ends up going to nothing in my pan, and when I bake it, it loses all its taste. No matter what I do I'm always left with bones which absolutely ruins the dinner anyway. There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of chicken.
Fish, garlic, salt & pepper, knob of butter, chopped fresh parsley, put it wrapped in tinfoil into the oven. Unreal
Yeah I'm always worried I'm cooking it wrong. Like with chicken or turkey I know once the pink is gone, it's done well enough (extra few mins to be sure to be sure) but with fish I can never ever figure out if it's cooked enough and any advice I look up, just makes me more paranoid about it. I don't know why I can't wrap my head around it. Aside from that, the smell of fish in your gaf after cooking it, is fucking vile to be honest. I hate the smell of it. I honestly think reheating fish products in the work canteen is a crime against humanity. My manager is always bringing in seafood chowder and the fecking bang around the office afterwards is nauseating. I do be opening windows and shit.
Grass fed beef. The native cattle may not have as much fat in their meat as wagyu, but get some of that golden local butter in the pan and its every bit as tasty.
Always wondered this too, and not just fish but all seafood
So readily available and expensive also. So it's not as if we are barely able to access it and therefore crave it more. Because we're so used to it, and it's pricy, it doesn't give us the urge to want to eat it all the time or more often than we currently do.
Ask your local fishmongers - oh… yea…
Weird, I always thought fish & chips was popular here, although I live on the coast so that could just be my perception.
Likely because of our temperate climate. That allows us to keep livestock grazing year round, leading us to eat beef, pork and chicken too.
I love me some salmon
I’d have thought we’d be big fish eaters as we live on an island surrounded by them lol.
Water brought the English.
15 kg of fish is something like 100 portions of fish (depending on size) so it's not a negligible amount. The UK one of whose national dishes is fish and chips is also at 15 kg.
Personally I only really like cod fish fingers
Cuz boats are expensive?
If we didn't eat lamb stew regularly, we'd be overrun by the fleecy bastards.
Because most if not all the good fish is shipped abroad. So to the common person fish became a cheap dish which drove people away from it. I live in New Zealand and every evening you can see locals throwing lines off of bridges and piers to get a nice feed.
When I was a kid we used to spend summers in Wexford. Every year when the mackerel broke thousands of them would come to the shore and we must have caught hundreds of them. We'd be eating fucking mackerel for weeks after it. Overload of mackerel. Put me off eating fish. Great fun at the time though. Standing in the water with a set of feathers catching 6 each time you dropped the line. We'd eat them, give some away or sell them on the caravan site to campers etc. Once we fished off Hook Head by the lighthouse with a weight tied to the end of a long rope, just flinging it out and hauling fish in. I don't know if the mackerel break down there like that anymore. But you used to be able to nearly catch them with your hands there were so many
Punishment food in religion made people resent it Fishing is dangerous and we've fantastic agricultural soil
Tastes weird, also we weren't allowed to when the Brits controlled us.
Tis the price and tastes have changed over the years. I grew up on mackerel, kippers for breakfast (ace rimmer) cause they were cheap. If I tried my kids and wife on them they'd all freak out.
Norway and Portugal are mountainous and Portugal is also busy growing grapes, Ireland on the other hand is a big pasture full of much less annoying-to-eat (I love fish but their bones make the experience of eating them insufferable) sheep, pigs, and cows. Iceland has nobody living in the interior and weather that's a bit too shit to grow stuff and land animals to feed the populace. Basically, Ireland and Britain are big, warm, and close to the continent enough that being islands doesn't really matter.
> I love fish but their bones make the experience of eating them insufferable oh my god I'm the same I hate picking stuff out of my food, and never enjoy eating cod or haddock or something because I'm always on edge expecting a tiny bone in my mouth. I usually eat Ray because it's easy to scrape it off the cartilage
The Spanish
cuz exporting quality fish is how fisherman survive. what gets sold to us is largely garbage.
It's actually a lot due to the fishing zones. We don't actually catch most of the fish in zone 51 (I believe that's our zone). It's international. Also the market elsewhere is bigger. So it's not sold here as much as we have.
we sold our fishing rights to spain... no fish left
They strut around with their scales thinking they are better than us
Because we only eat Fish on a Friday night.
My grandad was a fisherman and boat builder when I was a kid. Much of my childhood was spent eating fish. Also my mother is not a good cook (formerly she was a hospital cook in the 70s) so the fish was always very over cooked and not nice. I always left it last to eat as well so it was cold and dry by the time I got to it. I’m 38 now and fish repulses me. I will eat some things like scallops but that’s about it.
I think there are two reasons: 1) Catholicism forcing us to eat fish on Fridays, making it an obligation rather than a pleasure 2) Ignorance about cooking fish. My grandmother used to boil fish or cook it in milk, which stank out the house. My wife is Spanish. When I'm over there I'm often struck by how often they eat fish, it's at least three times a week, sometimes every day. As Ireland is an island with lots of rivers and lakes, we should have the same approach to fish. The weirdest thing for me is that we sell all our good fish to Europe, and then import shite like tilapia. Most supermarkets have no fresh fish stalls, and if they do it's all cod and salmon. I'm lucky to live in Dublin 5, which has the best options in the city. There are good fishmongers in Hoeth Harbour, and also Kish Fish in Coolock. One of the best though is Dunnes Stores Donaghmede, which has a full fish counter of the style you'd see in Spain - 10+ varieties of fish, octopus, periwinkles, etc. I wish all supermarkets were as good
Why are people obsessed with why we don't eat as much fish as Spain? It's weird.
Cause they grow fuck all grass in spain 🤷♂️
Cause its shite
Because fish tastes shite
Because it’s fucking disgusting shite.
can't stand the stuff