Sardines

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Sardines

Tinned sardines are a sustainable choice. They are caught purse seine (where a large net is lowered into the water and closed around the fish) so there is no damage to the sea bed as there can be with bottom trawling, and the smaller sardines can swim through the net and replenish ocean stocks. As with all tinned fish, there’s no waste either - you can eat everything that’s in the can, including the bones. And there’s no rush to eat the fish which also means less waste. They’re caught at their best and all the goodness is preserved in the tin - they just get tastier the longer they are in the tin.

Tinned sardines are high in nutrition. Oily fish like sardines contain omega-3 fatty acid. Our bodies do not produce this so we need to get it from food. Omega-3 fatty acid is a polyunsaturated fat - a good fat that helps lower cholesterol and blood pressure and protect against heart disease. Oily fish might also help combat anxiety and depression, be good for joint and eye health too and prevent hardening of the arteries. A healthy diet should include two portions (a portion is around 140g or a tin and a half) of fish each week and one of them should be oily, the NHS says. There is different advice for different groups – but this applies to everyone. The bones in tinned sardines are soft and disappear if you mash the sardines. They’re also full of goodness. If you prefer sardines without bones, choose the fillets by Berthe, Sound Seafood and Los Peperetes. Alternatively, the bones in sardinillas or small sardines are so tiny they are undetectable.

You can't beat tinned sardines on toast. It's a classic. Sardines mashed on toast with black pepper and chopped herbs is a fail-safe. Drain them first if the sardines are in olive oil, but load them onto toast sauce and all when they’re packed in tomato or Galician sauces. Sardines with scrambled eggs and chopped tomatoes on toast works very well. They’re protein-heavy and carb-light so pairing them with carbs makes for a more balanced dish. Thinly sliced shallot, red onion or white all work well with sardines or toast, and some chopped herbs for a bit of freshness and colour.

Cooking with tinned sardines is simple because the sardines are already cooked so all that’s required is to heat them through towards the end of the cooking time. They’re great added to a traybake of roasted vegetables (10 minutes before they come out of the oven) – their skins crisp up but the sardines don’t dry out. With rice is also great; if you heap them onto just-boiled rice the steam heats the sardines through. The same goes for pasta. The sauce they come packed in is a good way to enrich a pasta sauce too. Check out our recipe page for more ideas. In colder months, a Basque dish called piperade could be in order. Piper means pepper in Basque. A piperade is typically green pepper, onion, tomatoes and garlic sautéed in olive oil. However you have them, some kind of acid, like lemon juice or white wine vinegar, will cut through the sardine’s fattiness and work well. 

More about sardines

  • Sardines are an oily fish – like mackerel, anchovies, salmon, trout and herring. They are a kind of herring and belong to the Clupeidae family. 
  • Sardines are a forage fish (food for larger fish) and they’re epipelagic which means they live in the ocean’s 4000m-deep pelagic zone, in the 200m-deep illuminated part close to the surface. They’re fished mostly during the night when they come to the surface to feed on plankton. 
  • The difference between sardines and pilchards. Sardines and pilchards are one and the same. Pilchards are larger, older, adult sardines. 
  • Why sardines are called sardines: the name (possibly) comes from Sardinia, the island around which they were once abundant.