Pink or Red?

[jackholl0]

Apart from the obvious i.e colour, what is the difference between red and pink tinned salmon? Are they from different types of salmon, young or old salmon perhaps or just different cuts from the same fish.

In a blindfolded taste test I couldn't tell the difference!!!

This begs the question why one (red), is twice the price of the other???

[andy-hughes]

I could be wrong, but I think the difference is aesthetic only - 'red' was seen as superior, and was always more expensive to buy.

Similar to brown and white eggs - no difference in the eggs themselves, just a preference among some people.

[lyndsayp]

i work as a quality auditor in a fish factory. generally a red salmon is a wild species (coho or alaskan for example) so it eats what it finds in its own waters. pink salmon is your standard farm produced salmon so this is fed stuff to give it the pink colour (organic salmon is actually very very pale). hope this helps

[jackholl0]

Thanks lyndsayp. I thought it might be something along those lines. However a couple of anomalies seem to exist in the world of tinned salmon.

1) They appear to have been around as a foodstuff for many, many years presumably before the rise of 'salmon farming' on any great scale.

2) why do producers simply not dye the farmed salmon red creating an instant premium product. Nowhere on the tins does it state 'farmed salmon' or more importantly 'reared in the wild', a feature you would assume would be highlighted!

A fishy tale indeed????