What Do You Need to Learn Seafood?

Learning how to cook seafood might be an intimidating venture, especially if you have little to no prior cooking experience. However, with a bit of time, patients, and willingness to learn, making seafood dishes can be incredibly fun and rewarding. The following guide will help you understand how to get started cooking seafood, including any supplies you may need and a variety of methods to help you begin. No matter your goals when it comes to seafood, follow along to find ways you can make the learning process easier and be successful in your seafood endeavors.

What is Seafood?

Anything edible pulled from the sea qualifies as seafood, so with the massive variety of fish and other sea creatures swimming around, it’s almost overwhelming to think about how many seafood dishes are possible. But eating seafood certainly isn’t a new trend, as plenty of data suggests that seafood has been eaten for a very long time. While something like crab rangoon is a relatively recent seafood dish, even the most basic, raw shellfish was crucial to the survival of many early humans. 

Since those first days of consuming shellfish, however, seafood has become enormously popular in multiple countries and cultures. Whether it’s sushi, paella, grilled salmon, fish and chips, there are seafood dishes available for anyone to enjoy no matter their personal taste. And while seafood dishes can be found at diners, street vendors, and even seafood-specific restaurants, stocking seafood in your fridge or pantry is a perfectly viable—and arguably much better and cheaper—option for eating seafood.

Benefits of Learning Seafood?

You can imagine, at least vaguely, that buying and cooking your own seafood will save you money in the long run. But in some cases, those savings could pile up faster than you might expect, especially if you’re someone who dines out frequently. One study found that some adults saved up to roughly $330 per month by cooking at home. If you’ve been wanting to leap into cooking more at home, you’ll very likely experience noticeable savings rather quickly.

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Saving money isn’t the only thing you’ll have to look forward to though, as increased consumption of seafood has been linked to both physical and mental health benefits as well. People who eat seafood at least twice a week significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and hypothyroidism. Eating seafood can also help you maintain healthy body weight and stave off obesity, though the effects are more noticeable when seafood is coupled with other healthy foods and exercise.

While anyone can enjoy the above benefits, knowing how to cook seafood also opens employment-related doors if you decide you want to take cooking more seriously. Job outlook for chefs is promising, with growth expected at a rate much faster than average over the next eight years. Any cooking skills are valuable to a chef, and knowing how to cook seafood is no exception.

Is Seafood Easy to Learn?

While it can be easy to get started learning seafood and understand how to cook in theory, putting the right skills into practice can be a bit challenging, especially for those who have little cooking experience or haven’t received proper instruction. There are so many different types of seafood dishes as well as several different techniques involved in prepping and cooking seafood that it can be daunting trying to learn it all. Luckily, things like online tutorials and videos, cookbooks, and cooking classes make learning seafood much more manageable. Videos and books can give you the basics when you’re just starting, and seafood classes can give you hands-on instruction to take your skills to the next level. 

Those interested in taking seafood classes have two major options: in-person and online delivery. In-person classes are taught in a variety of places, including studio kitchens, restaurants, and homes. Expert instructors demonstrate seafood techniques and guide a group of students through executing various recipes in these classes. Most in-person classes will provide all the necessary ingredients and materials for you, though a rare few may ask you to bring small items of your own.

If, for whatever reason, in-person classes aren’t viable for you, there are plenty of online seafood classes available. These classes are also led by expert instructors, but over a conferencing platform like Zoom rather than in a communal kitchen space. While online classes do offer the flexibility of joining in from any (interruption-free) environment with a stable internet connection, they also require participants to procure all necessary ingredients and supplies on their own. Regardless of your preference for in-person or online, you can find plenty of upcoming seafood classes on CourseHorse. 

If you’re based in or around New York City, Seafood 101 from The Brooklyn Kitchen is a perfect class for beginners. You’ll learn several essential techniques for cooking seafood, including fileting, skinning, and pan-searing fish. You’ll also tackle unique cooking techniques for shellfish and spend time learning how to use fish bones to make stocks for dishes like chowder.

One online class you can sign up for is Teaching Table’s Shrimp Scampi from Scratch. In roughly 90 minutes, not only will you learn to make perfectly cooked and seasoned shrimp, but you’ll also learn how to make fresh pasta dough. This is a great class for those who are just dipping their toes into the vast ocean of seafood dishes and want to focus on just one great recipe for now. 

What You Need to Know Before Learning Seafood

If you want to enroll in a seafood class, there are a few things you need to consider. First, the cooking techniques you learn will likely be different depending on the recipes the course will focus on. For example, if you want to improve on your knife skills, a sushi-making class might be a good choice, but you might not get much chance to work with knives in a class focused on shrimp dishes. If you’re interested in improving skills that will transfer to other dishes, make sure to check course descriptions for skills that will be covered before signing up.

With in-person classes, it’s a huge benefit to have instructors provide all ingredients for you, but some may worry about not learning how to shop for seafood and assess the quality of ingredients on their own. Some classes will take time to teach you about sourcing ingredients at markets and grocery stores, but others won’t. If you’re interested in learning how to shop for good seafood in addition to cooking it, that’s something else to look out for when signing up for a class. 

That said, most foundational seafood classes will assume participants have no prior experience, so they’ll cover a variety of basic kitchen skills as well as skills you might need outside the kitchen to ensure you can make the best possible seafood dish at home. 

Most beginners might struggle with understanding when seafood is finished cooking and may have a tendency to overcook. This is where an instructor’s guidance comes in handy. If you overcook a fish, it can be difficult to fix, but an undercooked fish can always go back in the pan, on the grill, or in the oven for a few more minutes if needed. Check your seafood’s doneness periodically, and you’ll slowly figure out accurate cook times for all the different fish you may use.

What You Need to Learn Seafood

A few basic tools will suffice when you’re just getting started with seafood. As you progress, you can look into purchasing more specialist tools for specific dishes (like a shucking knife for oysters or seafood crackers for crab legs). For most seafood dishes, you’ll probably want a knife and cutting board, a pot, a frying or grilling pan, and utensils like a fish spatula and ladle. These supplies, coupled with time and patience, should be enough to get you started with most beginner-friendly seafood dishes, and they’ll still be essential when you start making more complicated dishes too.

Remember, most in-person seafood classes will provide ingredients and equipment for you, but you’ll still need to buy your own cooking supplies for home use if you want to recreate the recipes you learn for yourself, friends, and family.

Sharp Knife

While there are plenty of specialty knives out there that are seafood-specific such as a filet knife, any multi purpose chef’s knife will be enough to get you started. Sharpness is key here, as a well-sharpened knife ensures safer, easier cutting when you’re working with fish. 

Cutting Board

It’s generally recommended you have multiple cutting boards for different types of food; you won’t want to filet a fish on the same cutting board you dice up raw fruit or veggies, for example. Either wood or plastic is fine, and as far as size is concerned, opt for a somewhat larger cutting board if you can, especially if you anticipate fileting fish rather than buying pre-packaged filets at the grocery store. 

Pots and Pans

Most people interested in seafood classes will already have at least one pot and pan in their kitchens. If not, these are crucial for most seafood dishes you can make, whether you want to pan-fry a salmon or simmer a large portion of paella, gumbo, or chowder. 

Fish Spatula

In truth, just about any spatula will do for beginners, but fish spatulas are specifically designed for getting under delicate filets without tearing them apart. They’re also great for letting hot oil drain right through them since they have such large holes.

Ingredients

There’s no cooking without actual food items, so no matter what dishes you’re aiming to make, you’ll need to get ready to hit a local market or grocery store. In addition to fish and other seafood, you’ll also want whatever herbs and seasonings your recipe (or imagination) calls for. Common items to pair with fish include salt, lemon, and basil, but don’t be afraid to branch out.

Key Takeaways

• It’s easy to start learning seafood, but certainly tough to master. Proper instruction from an expert can make the process go much smoother. There are online and in-person seafood classes that will teach you basic cooking skills needed for seafood, as well as individual recipes that can be recreated at home.
• Before signing up for a class, you should decide what’s more important to you: a class that covers a wider variety of basic skills, a more relaxed class that focuses on one specific recipe, or a higher commitment course that will help prep you for a career in cooking.
• To start cooking seafood, you’ll need at the very least a sharp knife, cutting board, pot, pan, and spatula. Once you become more comfortable with cooking seafood, you can look into getting more specialty tools like a shucking knife or crab crackers.
• You can contact CourseHorse to find out more about online or in-person seafood classes, including private group sessions.