Our fillets, prawns and burgers arrive frozen, hand-packed by our family in Surrey. How you thaw them decides how they cook, so here's what we do at home.
Overnight in the fridge
This is the best method. The night before, move the fillet, still sealed, onto a plate on the bottom shelf of the fridge. A 1.5 lb sockeye fillet is ready by dinner the next day. Cook it within a day or two.
Cold water, about an hour
For a same-day dinner, keep the fish in its sealed package (or a zip bag with the air pressed out) and sink it in a bowl of cold tap water. Change the water every 30 minutes. A thin fillet thaws in under an hour, and a thick one can take two. Cook it as soon as it's soft.
Straight from frozen
Fillets can go into the oven frozen. Rinse off any surface ice, pat dry, brush with oil and bake at 400°F for about half again the usual time: roughly 15 to 18 minutes instead of 10 to 12. Salt it partway through, once the surface has thawed enough to hold seasoning.
Prawns
Tip frozen prawns into a colander and run cold water over them for 5 to 8 minutes, tossing once or twice, until they bend. You can also thaw the bag overnight in the fridge. Prawns cook in 2 to 3 minutes, so take them off the heat as soon as they turn pink and curl.
Two things we never do
We don't thaw seafood on the counter. The outside warms up while the centre is still frozen, and that's when bacteria grow. We also skip the microwave's defrost setting, because it starts cooking the thin edges before the middle has thawed.
A fillet thawed in the fridge can go back in the freezer raw if plans change, though the texture softens a little each time.
Once it's thawed, our sockeye cooking guide covers the pan, the oven and the cedar plank. To stock the freezer, the 10 lb sockeye value box ($203.95) works out to about $20.40 a pound.
