Fishwife Sardines with Hot Pepper

I picked up these Fishwife Sardines with Hot Pepper at Whole Foods the last time they were on sale there. I've worked my way through about half their catalog of tinned fish so far. I wanted to see how they compared to the version with preserved lemon. Let's see how these are.

Initial impression upon opening the can: 5/5.

Another of those tough to open cans. These look really nice. Silvery skin with no scales apparent. They still have their pelvic fins, which normally aren't prickly, so they don't present a problem. The aroma is of a very fresh sardine. A sip of the EVOO is neutral until the pepper sneaks up at the back of the throat. The pepper has a different note than the usual piri-piri I'm used to. The carton just says "hot pepper".

A small taste finds the pepper's heat hasn't really translated to the fish. Nonetheless, they are reasonably firm yet tender, and have a really good sardine flavor.

Let's Eat

There were four stocky pilchards. One I ate by itself to get a sense of the quality. They resisted being pried from the can, so they got a little roughed up.

Out over rice, there's the pepper. It doesn't look any different than what you find in most cans of spicy sardines. I also poured about half the oil remaining in the can over all of it. I figured it would be the best chance of maximizing the hot pepper experience.

Working through it, the pepper level was steady, and didn't become fatiguing. The meat on these is tender and not dry at all. The salt level was OK. It seemed less than the average 340mg. listed, though.

Main Takeaways

• Top quality sardine, hot pepper or no
• Initial impression was of possibly more heat than necessary, but didn't turn out to be the case
• Spendy, but a bargain if found on sale

Reasonably priced at Amazon, but only in a 4-pack assortment.