HIGHLINER FISH WINGS

Fish Wings?

Fish Wings.

This past week I was scanning the grocery flyers when I saw Food Basics had Fish Wings on sale. It was like everything stopped/the record scratched - Fish Wings? Whaaaaaat? I was both horrified and curious at the same time. What is this? I had to try it. I didn't want to, but I had to.

I went to Food Basics, and the first location didn't have any. Another grocery store (not Food Basics) also didn't have it. I went to another Food Basics, and they had it - but the bunker label said it was $7.99 whereas the flyer said $6.99. The cashier ran it through and it was $6.99. So far these things were causing all sorts of trouble.

I didn't really read the box before buying them, I just grabbed it and ran. All I really noticed was that they were really playing up the wing tropes here: basket lined with the wings and dip and veggies. On closer inspection, it's newspaper lining the basket, bridging the world of fish and wings!

Then I noticed this:

what the heck? Where is old Captain High Liner? This is like The Most Interesting Man in the World, meets Trivago Guy, meets Toronto Fashion Santa. I don't know how I feel about this.

There's a big emphasis on the packaging that this is wild caught Alaskan Pollock fish. Also these are being marketed as a snack. It's breaded/fried Pollock chunks with a Frank's Red Hot 'Buffalo Wing Breading'. I find it funny they have a small warning this contains fish. There's also a warning that they try to remove all the bones, but they can't guarantee that they remove all the bones. I read that AFTER I ate these. But not bones.

I opened the box and was surprised to find the fish was just floating free in the box. I'm used to frozen wings or anything frozen being in a plastic bag inside the box. I'm cool with this because we don't need so much wasteful packaging. I also noticed there was nothing else in the box. I kind of expected a Buffalo sauce dip, or a blue cheese/ranch dip like in the photo. There is nothing but fish nugget.

The box is 454g or fish chunks, which worked out to be 21 pieces of Pollock in various sizes. I spread them out on a baking sheet with parchment paper, and preheated the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit  as per the instructions.

Some pieces kind of resembled wings? But mostly they resembled unformed chicken nuggets. I mean look at the photo above and tell me you wouldn't confuse that for chicken?  The colour pre-baking was light brown with just the lightest tinge of orangey/red. You can also see pepper? or some form of seasoning on the breaded chunks.

When the oven was ready, I put these in for 20 minutes to cook, turning them at the 10 minute mark.

When I bought these, I saw in the picture the fish was shown with dip, but there was none. I knew I was going to need some dip, so I whipped up a quick tartar sauce:

• 2 tablespoons of sour cream
• 4 tablespoons of mayo
• 2 tablespoons of dill relish
• 1 tablespoons of lemon juice (or I used like 2 cap-fulls from the bottle)
•  Salt & Pepper to taste 

Mix together and if you have time let it meld in the fridge. This is a pretty thick tartar sauce due to the sour cream, but it's probably the best I've ever made at home. If I had known I was going to make this, I would have picked up some blue cheese and made this more wing-like, but oh well.

After 20 minutes, the wings weren't quite crispy. Using tongs, they were quite soft and I was worried about them falling apart. So I popped them back into the oven under the low setting of my broiler for them to get crispier. Oh, I also popped in some leftover fries from another meal. What's fish without chips?

So the wings did crisp up a bit better after broiling them, but they never got to the level I would expect them to be at. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, if I picked up one of the bigger pieces, I was afraid of them flopping and breaking apart. They weren't mushy, but deep frying them would fix this issue.

The size of these nuggets were mostly of what I would say would be medium-ish for a frozen wing, but there were some small little nugs in the bunch.

The breading on these is not thin, but it's not thick. It's good because it doesn't overwhelm your bites with flour breading. The fish inside is VERY tender. It just flakes and falls apart in your mouth. So these may not have a nice crispy crunch to the bite, they almost melt in the mouth.

As for the flavour, I took my first bite: I tasted a strong fishy flavour (yes it's fish, but it's fishy fish). I took another bite, and I more noticed the salty/spicy hint of the Frank's. I took another bite and it was fish again. Each one was a roller coaster of being ok and being too fishy. It's a good thing I made the tartar sauce because it kind of neutralized the fishy taste. But because the structural integrity was so week, I couldn't dip the nuggets but had to dollop the sauce onto them instead.

Would I Buy These Again?

No.

The concept isn't bad. I wasn't crazy about them not being crispy enough, but the fish itself was soo tender I could overlook that. And while the spice on these was decent, they weren't strong enough in wing flavour. I'm ok with there being no sauce on these, but more spice would be better. My biggest issue was that these were just too fishy for my liking. If you like that fishy taste, you might like these. But I had to cover them in tartar sauce just to consume a portion of them. The rest went into the fridge as leftovers, and I don't think I'm going to go back to them.  8/14

High Liner 
Wild Alaska Fish Wings