Have you been wanting to learn seafood but worried it might be too tough? Learning a new skill certainly comes with challenges, though some people might learn faster than others. The challenges that you’ll face when learning seafood will depend on factors like your prior experience with cooking, the amount of free time you can dedicate to learning, and the goals you make for yourself while learning the skill. However, no matter what your current schedule or comfort level with seafood is like, there are tons of tools available to help make learning seafood skills much easier.
What is Seafood?
People have been eating seafood for a very, very long time—for over 100,000 years. But since those very early days of munching on shellfish, seafood has exploded with popularity and creativity in cultures all over the world, with seafood being a dietary staple and mainstay in many countries. For example, it’s hard to think of Japan without sushi, Maine without lobster, or Boston without clam chowder.
In the simplest terms, anything edible that comes from the sea is seafood. This includes a huge variety of bony fish, shellfish, mollusks, cephalopods, and even sea vegetables like seaweed. Seafood dishes can be found in diners, fast food restaurants, seafood-specific restaurants, and at street vendors. You can also find plenty of seafood options at your local grocery store or market, allowing you to cook seafood dishes at home. For many people, this is preferable to dining out, and thanks to the variety and availability of seafood products, it’s fairly easy to start cooking seafood at home if you currently don’t.
Benefits of Learning Seafood?
People who cook their own seafood at home will likely save quite a bit of money over time, especially if they use it as an opportunity to cut back on frequent fast food or delivery experiences. In one study, cooking at home meant saving around $300 per month on average. While these savings do depend somewhat on factors like prices at different stores or frequency of grocery shopping, you’re still more than likely to see real savings when you shift more toward cooking at home.
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Your wallet won’t be the only thing thanking you when you start eating more seafood at home, however. Eating seafood at least twice a week has been connected to increased physical and mental health. Those who consume seafood regularly have a decreased risk of heart disease and stroke, and they’re also less likely to develop depression, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and other diseases. Everything you might have heard about fish being “brain food” is true after all.
As a skill, cooking is incredibly marketable too; anything you practice at home is building knowledge that can be used in the culinary industry. If you’re even slightly interested in working as a chef someday, then learning to cook seafood at home will give you a big leg up. The job outlook for chefs looks great right now, with an expected growth rate of 15% over the next eight years. But even if you’re not keen to become the next great chef, knowing how to cook seafood is something that will impress close friends and family that you want to invite over, and allows you to strengthen your connections and bond over great meals.
What Are the Hardest Parts of Learning Seafood?
As you might expect with learning any skill, you’ll certainly face challenges when trying to learn seafood. Common roadblocks might include a lack of free time, needing to master basic skills before executing recipes you really want to make, and inexperience in buying fresh ingredients and kitchen supplies.
Free Time
There are no two ways about it: cooking on your own is time-consuming. Whether you need to thaw ingredients, bring water to a boil, or wait for the ding of your oven to be preheated, cooking seafood is work that demands both time and energy. There’s also the fact that you’ll need to clean up the kitchen after you’re finished eating. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to make the process of cooking easier on yourself.
For example, don’t feel like you need to do tasks one at a time—you can cut vegetables while you wait for your water to boil, or make a delicious sauce while your salmon bakes in the oven. If you still worry about the total time commitment of certain recipes, there are plenty that can be executed in 30 minutes or less. That includes these shrimp tacos, which are the focus of an online class you can sign up for. Many seafood classes can also help you navigate the difficulties of time management in the kitchen since they’re taught by expert instructors with years of experience as amateur home cooks or professional chefs.
Mastering Basic Skills
If you have zero prior cooking experience, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to execute a great paella, sushi roll, or lobster thermidor right away. Beginners need to take the time to practice essential kitchen skills first, like using kitchen knives and seasoning your food correctly. You’ll also want to know the difference between roasting, blanching, and sauteing (and also take the time to practice each technique multiple times).
Keep in mind that your need to master basic techniques is largely dependent on your goals for cooking seafood. If you only want to make the perfect sushi rolls but don’t have much interest in pan-seared scallops, you don’t need to worry much about practicing your stovetop skills, but you’ll need to be extremely comfortable with your kitchen knives. If you’re happy with mastering just a few recipes, then you only need to focus on mastering the relevant skills for those recipes. But if you want to become a competent seafood chef, you’ll need to master several key techniques before you feel comfortable improvising or adjusting recipes as you go.
Buying Ingredients
It can be incredibly difficult to assess the quality of a fish at a market or store if you have little experience buying fresh seafood. There’s also the question of knowing what vegetables, herbs, and seasonings will pair well with your seafood item of choice. While it’s perfectly acceptable to experiment with flavors, it can also be discouraging when a dish turns out in a way you didn’t expect or doesn’t taste quite right.
A lot of beginner seafood classes understand these concerns and will dedicate time to helping alleviate them. In addition to learning a few recipes and getting hands-on experience, you’ll also get important knowledge related to shopping for and prepping your seafood to give you the best chance of executing an excellent dish without feeling like you wasted time and money.
Key Takeaways
- Anyone can learn to make seafood so long as they’re patient and willing to push through challenges.
- Cooking and eating seafood at home will save you money in the long run, help prevent several diseases, and increase your chances of starting a career in the culinary business if that’s of interest to you.
- Some of the major challenges of cooking seafood include a demand for your free time, the need to master several basic cooking skills, and figuring out how to purchase quality ingredients.
- None of the challenges of cooking seafood outweigh the benefits, and these challenges can be overcome with some careful planning and consistent practice.
- You can contact CourseHorse to find options for online or in-person training, including private group sessions, which can teach you how to better overcome the challenges associated with cooking seafood at home.