I was leafing through this Marcella Hazan book and it came to my attention that anchovies are a pretty big deal in Italian cooking. I'd always thought of them as some gross little salty fish fuckers that weirdos put on pizza slices for no reason. Are they actually good? How do I know which ones to get? Is anchovie paste good? Do you get them fresh or canned or what?
Give me the quick rundown on 'chovies Veeky Forums
Other urls found in this thread:
youtube.com
twitter.com
No they're terrible, Italians only pretend to like them because they're a bunch of lame contrarians.
Anchovies are fucking fantastic. The fresh ones are best, but they are hard to find because they go bad so fast. So unless you happen to live next to the coast in an area where they are fished then you won't be getting any fresh ones.
Canned are nice. Anchovy paste is super useful; it's great in all kinds of stews and braises. Add some to your pasta sauce and pizza sauce and people will go fucking wild.
The ones you get in the store are usually the salty, cured anchovies. They don't taste like that when they're fresh which is what I'm assuming most Italian cooking involves them in.
Salt cured anchovies are a condiment or seasoning, whereas fresh anchovies are just fish.
Anyone who claims to have a secret ingredient is talking about anchovies 33% of the time.
Forage fish are always good
White anchovy master race
I like anchovy paste. I won't use a while tin of anchovies in one go. Tomato paste in cans is the same issue. Tubes brah. I add anchovy when I'm adding garlic to the pan before I incorporate it into the sauce. Adds salt and savory to your dish, which is cool if you're not adding other meat to it.
When you see a recipe call for anchovies, that almost always means salted anchovies packed in oil. These are the ones in my picture, and are very widely available. If your recipe calls for anchovy fillets specifically, that definitely means the salted, oil-packed version. Anchovies in their fresh unprocessed form are not really that special, and therefore more rarely used.
In their salted form, anchovies are used in small amounts as flavoring. Fresh anchovies would be used like any other small fish - you could put them on toast or stuff like that. There are also pickled anchovies, which are pretty decent and sorta similar to pickled herring.
Here's an example of how anchovies are typically used.
youtube.com
Personally I'm not a huge fan of the paste, but ymmv. In my experience, you can always use the salted fillets instead, just smush 'em up a bit.
>Salmons bow to the Anchovies
>in contact with atlanteans
>rumoured to possess psychic abilities
>control the seven seas with an iron fist
>own coral reefs and sandbanks all over the world
>direct descendants of the atlantean royal blood line
>will bankroll the first habitats on the bottom of the sea (Anchoviegrad will be be the first city)
>Control the italian crown
>keep Atlantis off the maps
>keep the Atlanteans under wraps
>keep Captain Iglo a star
>own basically every DNA editing research facility on Earth
>first designer fish will be Bogdanoff Babies
>anchovie swarms said to have 200+ IQ
>ancient Indian scriptures tell of fish who will descend upon the Earth and will bring an era of enlightenment and unprecedented technological progress with them
>These are the Anchovies
>They own Nanobot R&D labs around the world
>You likely have Choviebots inside you right now
>Anchovies are in regular communication with the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, forwarding the word of God to the Orthodox Church, No wonder the ancient christian imagery includes primarily fish!
>They learned fluent French in under a week
>Nation states entrust their plankton reserves with the fish. There's no plankton in the water, only Ft. Atlantis
>The Fish are millions of years old, from the space-time reference point of the base human.
>In reality, they are timeless beings existing in all points of time and space from the big bang to the end of the universe
>The Anchovies will guide humanity into a new age of wisdom, peace and love
...
i get them canned and put them on pizza, in pasta sauce or in salad.
t. half italian
I always mince up anchovies and put it in my homemade caesar salad dressing and it is delicious.
When I went to Italy I got fried anchovies everywhere I could, and they served them on everything from pizza to risotto. They are incredible but not really available in the US.
Difference between these and sardines?
t. never tried these
Have you never had a Caesar salad or tasted worcestershire sauce?
they're both nu-male cuckfoods. white guilt liberals pretend to like them in order to apologize to the muslims
This store near me sells a type of anchovies that are basically pickled instead of salt cured called boquerones. they are amazing. Tart and flavorful and not salty at all. perfect on toast or in a sandwich with some vegetables.
anchovies are pretty nice.
Fpwp
I like anchovies on pizza every once in a while. There's a local pizza place that does em right. If you see little shriveled up dried out anchovies on your cracker pizza with orange suace then it's fucked up bad. you need lots of oily sauce so it tastes like rainbows.
They taste awful on their own but they provide a very good richness to certain things (Caesar dressing for one)
That's my favorite image on all of Veeky Forums.
Always gets my kitty moist for anchovies.
Anchovies on their own or as any type of topping are a completely different thing than anchovies as an ingredient.
Easiest way to get to know the ingredient would probably be to just buy a tube of good anchovy paste and try using it in anything savory with a lot of fat. A tube should only have 3 ingredients (Anchovy, Salt, Oil) avoid anything with more than that.
Anchovy is basically umami. Like fish sauce in SE Asia, or katsuobushi in Japan. Use them as such and you'll be rewarded.