What seafood holds up the best in braises, soups and stews?

Ban the mush by using the right seafood for your slower-cooked recipes.

Claypot fish Source: Sharyn Cairns

There are certain textures you simply don’t want to be associated with your seafood dinner: tough and dry are two that instantly spring to mind, but mushy has got to round out the top three. Nothing makes your taste buds revolt faster than sloppy seafood.

Which is what makes a seafood stew, soup or braise so tricky. Smaller, delicate fish simply won’t hold up to the longer cooking time that these techniques demand. Flakier varieties will also turn to pulp. 

Here's the lowdown on how to ensure your slower cooked dishes like stews, curries, soups and braises are mush-free zones.

Stew on this

Nothing beats a good seafood stew for sharing with friends. Seafood curries are especially popular, like the Sri Lankan crab curry Nigethan Sithirasegaram prepared on Food Safari Water, which Maeve O’Meara described as “pure flavour”.

This Sri Lankan curry crab is so aromatic you can practically smell it through the screen on Food Safari Water. Source: Sharyn Cairns

Get Sithirasegaram's amazing recipe here.

The crab is stewed whole in the shell – the perfect way to slow-cook a delicate seafood like crab, without turning it to mush. This technique would also work well with lobster, pippies, tiger prawns, abalone and scallops.

For stews and curries without shellfish, it’s best to start with a good fish stock and then add the chunkier seafood pieces later. You’ll need firm-fleshed fish and seafood to keep the sloppiness at bay. Fish like leatherjacket, ling, flathead, whiting and dory are all good choices.

In curries, it’s also a good idea to use a fish with a stronger flavour, as the spicy flavours in the sauce will overpower milder flavoured fish. Oilier fish like mackerel, swordfish, tuna and yellowtail kingfish work well.

Braised right

Braising is a slow cooking technique that may not naturally be associated with the short cooking times of seafood. However, with the right seafood choice, it works beautifully to gently flavour the fish and keep it from drying out. Braising seafood also doesn’t call for the hours required to braise meat. Most seafood is gently braised through to meltingly tender in minutes.

Think of braising as poaching, but with a lid. A small amount of liquid surrounds the base of the fish or seafood, but doesn’t cover it. The liquid can be wine, milk, stock, broth, sauce or just plain water. Cover the lot with a lid and cook on a slow simmer until done.

Claypot cooking is ideal for this technique as the fish is both steamed and stewed to retain maximum flavour and texture. Angie Hong’s claypot fish recipe from Food Safari Water is a classic example. The clay not only adds moisture to help steam the food but also imparts an earthy note to the dish.

The earthy simplicity of cooking in a claypot has been a method used throughout the ages and is particularly popular in Vietnam. Source: Sharyn Cairns

Find the recipe for claypot fish here.

Braising is a gentle technique that suits most seafood. Octopus, squid, cuttlefish and abalone are particularly suitable to this method of cooking. Fish species like Murray cod, blue-eyed trevella, monkfish and salmon are also well suited to the technique.

For more delicate varieties like salmon and snapper (and other breams), you can sit the seafood on top of a bed of vegetables to lift it above the liquid. Technically, the fish is then cooked in a fragrant steam, rather than braised. It’s best not to sear delicate varieties before braising.

Souped up

Every variety of seafood has been used in a soup at one time or another. Seafood soup is popular in almost every cuisine, from a Breton cotriade to a Chinese crab soup to a Malaysian laksa.

Flakier fish like rainbow trout, salmon and whiting, and delicate fish and seafood like anchovies, oysters, clams and urchins, work best as single-flavour soups or paired with a similar-flavoured partner. Try a Russian ukha, using salmon and perch; or a Vietnamese oyster hotpot.

For ‘chunky’ style soups like bouillabaisse or chowder, keep to firm flesh varieties of seafood, like calamari, prawns, octopus, and fish like wild-caught barramundi, ling, mahi mahi, blue-eyed trevally and coral trout. The parihuela featured on Food Safari Water uses bream, which is cooked partly then added at the end of the dish, along with mussels, pippies, scallops and calamari.

Fragrant, spicy and loaded with seafood, parihuela is Peru’s answer to bouillabaisse. Source: Alan Benson

Try this Peruvian favourite here.

Of course, soups and broths are a fantastic way to use the whole fish: bones, heads, shells, tails. Make a broth using the fish parts you don’t want to eat whole, strain and discard. Use the stock as the basis for other fish braises, stews and soups.

Making fish stock ensures you extract every last bit of flavour from fish or seafood. One dish becomes another, and another and another...

This week it's all about feel good fish on Food Safari Water with Maeve O'Meara 7.30pm, Wednesdays on SBS and then you can catch-up on all episodes via SBS On Demand. Visit the program page for recipes, videos and more.