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A large portion of cod from our local chippie is now £9.90, from £7 a couple of months ago.

Bought some fish and chips in Hull last week and all they served was haddock. Couldn't be bothered to ask why. Maybe they're sulking after the Norwegians told them get lost from their cod fishing waters.

Youngian wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 8:28 pm Bought some fish and chips in Hull last week and all they served was haddock. Couldn't be bothered to ask why. Maybe they're sulking after the Norwegians told them get lost from their cod fishing waters.

A former colleague of mine said many years ago that the further north you go (he's from Sunderland originally), the more likely it is that if you ask for "fish and chips", the default is haddock. Similarly, he never took to this "southern" idea of leaving the skin on the fish - again it seemed the further north you went, the more likely it was that the fish would be skinless. Certainly round here it is.

See also: chips and brown gravy

No haddock at our place.


See - I avoided a cheap joke there...

What about skin on or skin off?

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 8:13 pm A large portion of cod from our local chippie is now £9.90, from £7 a couple of months ago.

Given present wholesale prices, that's not unreasonable. I mean obviously it isn't in real terms, but in terms of the chippie being there next week, yeah.

(Of course, all the profit is actually in the chips).

Similarly, he never took to this "southern" idea of leaving the skin on the fish

Is that a southern thing? Skin on fish is yuk and poor service to leave it on.

Youngian wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 9:23 pm

Similarly, he never took to this "southern" idea of leaving the skin on the fish

Is that a southern thing? Skin on fish is yuk and poor service to leave it on.

Occasionally when I'm at work I go to a chippie afterwards with my mate Chris, who's broken his fish/kebab and chips ten times a week habit. There the food is excellent, but the cod is with skin. He's very adept at removing it with his knife (before mashing it with a pint of vinegar).

The colleague from Sunderland recalled visiting a chippie in the Essex town he lives in that had changed hands, and it was now owned by a Chinese family from Sheffield. Upon asking them if they planned to leave the skin on, they bluntly said "where d'you think we're from? Of course we're bloody not."

MisterMuncher wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 9:08 pm

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 8:13 pm A large portion of cod from our local chippie is now £9.90, from £7 a couple of months ago.

Given present wholesale prices, that's not unreasonable. I mean obviously it isn't in real terms, but in terms of the chippie being there next week, yeah.

(Of course, all the profit is actually in the chips).

When I meet my chippie-owning mate on Sunday I'll ask him what he charges now. I haven't set foot in my local chippie for 18 months so have no idea what they charge; they are, however, very strict on Covid risk management and open on very reduced hours.

Here, and there's two good-sized fish processors within a dozen miles, haddock is nudging close to 3 quid a potion raw and unprepped. Cod is minimum 150% of that when available, and nearer 250% for never-frozen, fresh stuff. Outside of farmed salmon and the standard stuff no-one will eat (what I call "Chowder fish") fish prices have gone bucko. Meat too, especially chicken. Who knew so much UK and Ireland chicken went to Holland for processing (UK and Ireland processors are more geared to the ready meal and "chicken product" end of things than yer standard meat packing) apart from everyone in poultry, catering and food production? That's up to £4/kg for fillet from £2.60/kg in February or March.

It's a good job there's staff shortages, they couldn't pay a sufficiency of staff on those margins.

Haddock is a far superior fish to the ubiquitous (in England, at any rate) cod.

Go to any decent chippie in Scotland and the default fish with your chips will always be a haddie. The flavour is just miles better.

MisterMuncher wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 10:18 pm .. fish prices have gone bucko. Meat too, especially chicken.

Thing is, I remember when chicken was an expensive meat for the dinner table - the staples were beef and pork.

Boiler wrote: ↑Thu Aug 19, 2021 8:01 am

MisterMuncher wrote: ↑Wed Aug 18, 2021 10:18 pm .. fish prices have gone bucko. Meat too, especially chicken.

Thing is, I remember when chicken was an expensive meat for the dinner table - the staples were beef and pork.

I can vaguely recall chicken was a rarity in my early years. The farming is now ridiculously intensive and fairly unpleasant. Every once in a while there's a campaign or some recognition of that fact. It usually lasts about a month in the public consciousness before it fades. The truth is most people don't give a fuck if the first light it sees is at the back of the oven.

Elsewhere I've been discussing the environmental impacts of various foodstuffs (primarily as a response to people who think vegans are sanctimonious twats) and one chap suggested the future is chicken and fishy. (Bit Eurotrash, that). He did however concede that it's no fun living near giant chicken production facilities (I hesitate to call them 'farms') and neither is farming fish really acceptable.

If anything illustrates what has gone wrong in farming, it's the collapse in price of chicken.

More people really should listen to Farming Today - it's very educational and one of the few remaining true PSB programmes on Radio 4.

MisterMuncher wrote: ↑Thu Aug 19, 2021 9:51 pm I can vaguely recall chicken was a rarity in my early years. The farming is now ridiculously intensive and fairly unpleasant. Every once in a while there's a campaign or some recognition of that fact. It usually lasts about a month in the public consciousness before it fades. The truth is most people don't give a fuck if the first light it sees is at the back of the oven.

Same here. We ate beef, lamb and often rabbit.

Speaking of which there is an intensive rabbit farm about 1km from our place in France. A windowless shed. We only realised it house rabbits when we saw several hundred dumped, dead, in wheelie bins for collection. Apparently disease is a big problem. As they are white they don't last long if they escape, the place is stiff with buzzards and the occasional eagle. And the place stinks.

I talked to my neighbour about it (a free-range veal and beef producer at that time, having given up the dairy because it was completely uneconomical) and he said that the locals were all against the rabbit farm, but it was legal. They found it offensive.

The funny thing was that, unlike beef and pork, there were never big deals on local rabbits in the supermarkets, even though it is still widely eaten there. So I don't know where they were sold.

Most rabbits in the UK are sold as pet food as they’ve fallen out of favour over the decades at the butchers. Beatrix Potter and myxomatosis are probably the main culprits for its decline.

Boiler wrote: ↑Thu Aug 19, 2021 10:12 pm More people really should listen to Farming Today - it's very educational and one of the few remaining true PSB programmes on Radio 4.

Tim Martin made several appearances on Farming Today in the Brexit items. This wasn’t laziness on their part its just that they couldn’t find anyone in agriculture with any authority higher than UKIP Farmer Prat from Suffolk to give a counter argument to a trade specialist from the WTO or EU.

Youngian wrote: ↑Fri Aug 20, 2021 12:15 am Most rabbits in the UK are sold as pet food as they’ve fallen out of favour over the decades at the butchers. Beatrix Potter and myxomatosis are probably the main culprits for its decline.

Along with "rabbit starvation" if you eat too much of it.

Boiler wrote: ↑Fri Aug 20, 2021 9:05 am Along with "rabbit starvation" if you eat too much of it.

Wasn't this brought up on MW2.0 (2018-2021)?

A fascinating subject, well worth the three hour rabbit hole - npi- into which a chap can descend.