Tilapia vs. Haddock

With our newfound sense of fish responsibility, we realized that we may have to give up fish fingers. See, the fish fingers we've been buying are made of haddock, which is no-no sustainability-wise but so very yes-yes convenience and taste wise.

Then Kenneth chanced upon some tilapia fish fillets in the supermarket, and they were on sale. Phew. Farmed tilapia is sustainable, thank goodness. (By the way, notice how similar the pictures on the boxes look. Makes you wonder...)

Anyway, we decided to do a taste test tonight to see whether our taste buds were being called on to make a sacrifice. We cooked one piece of each (the skinnier one is the haddock and the more elliptical one is the tilapia) at the same time and split them between the two of us.

The batter for the tilapia was actually more flavorful, with a touch of lemon. When eating the fish fingers as they were meant to be eaten, that is, with fish meat and batter in the same mouthful, we couldn't really tell the difference between the texture and taste of the fish meat, although the tilapia was more flavorful because of the batter. When we isolated the meat, the haddock was a more condensed piece of fish while the tilapia was lighter. They were comparable taste-wise.

The verdict? If you're talking about fish fingers, which are pretty processed and covered with a generous amount of breading, there's really no difference meat-wise between the tilapia and the haddock. In terms of taste, the tilapia was actually more flavorful because of the breading. So if you're buying fish fingers, consider getting the tilapia variety to earn some karma points.