Starfish Seafood and Nakano Vinegars

Seafood and Nakano

We’re happy to announce the two newest sponsors of this website: Starfish Seafood and Nakano Vinegars.

Starfish makes the most delicious frozen fish I’ve ever eaten. That it’s gluten-free and delicious is quite amazing. We were lucky enough to sample the battered halibut and cod last year, and I’ve been meaning to recommend them to you ever since. The crust is crisp and light, the fish is whole with a chew instead of processed and mushy, and the effect of each bite is to make you want more.

I’m serious. Once you take a taste of this, you’re going to want more.

You can also feel good about the fish because Starfish sources its fish through Pacific Seafood, based in Oregon, which has a strong sustainability practice. This isn’t processed fish parts clumped and battered. This is wild-harvested fish. You can taste the difference.

I’ve had the chance to talk with the folks at Starfish, and in particular the head of Research and Development. He told me recently that the letters they receive from gluten-free folks mean more to them than any other. “People are so grateful. That pushes us to do more and better.” This company truly cares about good gluten-free food.

Starfish Seafood is available nationwide at Whole Foods and at many stores near you.

This is a good company. We’re very happy and honored to have them here with us.

We’re also very happy to have Nakano Vinegars aboard.

Danny and I are both pretty crazy about rice wine vinegar. Rice wine vinegar adds a bit of sweetness, with a punch. The tangy quality keeps your lips puckered, trying to discover what that taste is. Rice wine veingar shows up in quite a bit of foods in our kitchen. I use it to season the water for poaching eggs (it also helps the egg white to coagulate). Danny splashes it into his favorite barbecue sauce. We couldn’t pickle jicama or carrots without it.

Danny says he likes to splash rice wine vinegar in with miso, because it enhances the flavor so well. If you’re making anything with a sweet and sour taste, anything with cabbage, and most every salad you’ll make, you need rice wine vinegar.

We use Nakano’s natural rice wine vinegar around here, but Nakano also makes flavored rice wine vinegars that a lot of people love. We appreciate the fact that Nakano has worked hard to make sure their vinegars are gluten-free and support the gluten-free community.

This is another good company, one we’re happy to have as part of the team.

Buy some battered fish and splash some rice wine vinegar on it for fish and chips!

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23 comments on “Starfish Seafood and Nakano Vinegars”

  1. The InTolerant Chef

    It’s wonderful how many ‘main stream’ companies are looking into our market. As you say, the more they know we support them and the reasons why, the more they will support us. Don’t just let them know with your wallet — although thats good too!- a letter is a personal testimony to their efforts.

  2. Mama Wong

    My 8-year-old daughter LOVES the starfish products. As hard as I try, I cannot get the hang of making GF battered fish come out right and now I have less motivation to do so…

  3. Fega Barramundi

    Being on a seafood diet can be considered a very smart and healthy thing to do. There is a long list of diseases that eating fresh fish can help prevent. In countries where the women eat less red meat and more seafood, they have less problems with breast cancer. Another disease that seafood seems to help prevent is Alzheimer’s.

  4. Nancy G

    I love the Starfish products! Does anyone have any suggestions for replicating the taste of malt vinegar? I haven’t tried rice wine vinegar——does it have a similar taste?

  5. Christine

    I’ve never heard of Starfish Seafood, but it’s nice to hear of a bigger company with good practices! In fact, I never buy already prepared seafood, but I’m thinking this would be nice to have on hand for a lazy weeknight meal.

    And we’ve been big on Nakano since forever. And it helps that I always seem to somehow lose bottles in our pantry and repurchasing, so at any one time we will have three plain rice vinegars in there. I guess it’s a good thing that we like them!

  6. Katie

    I love battered fish and it’s so hard to find good actual real fish consistency frozen fish. I’ll definitely have to look for Starfish Seafood products at the store–thanks for the excellent tip!

  7. Gretchen

    Starfish looks really good, but I can’t find a list of ingredients anywhere on their website. Am I just a bad website navigator? I’m corn allergic as well as gluten-intolerant so I can’t eat a lot of gluten-free prepared foods. Going to Whole Foods means a special trip for us so I like to make sure that I know I’ll be getting something I can eat if I go!

    I’d love to find an easy source of fish as my husband strongly dislikes it but I want to eat it regularly; it’s hard to prepare single serving fish meals from scratch since it’s so perishable, so frozen fish would be perfect for that, and I love that they’re paying attention to sustainability. The Pacific Northwest’s fisheries are great.

  8. cyberprof

    Shauna, funny… I was just in the store yesterday to replace the Nakano’s rice vinegar that I used up making sweet/sour cucumber asian-style salad. For some reason, I never checked to make sure that the seasoned Nakano’s that I always used was GF, but never had a reaction so I kept buying it. There was an off-brand yesterday that was way cheaper, but I didn’t want to mess with success and bought Nakano’s plain. It’s nice to know that the seasoned Nakano’s is GF too.

  10. Sho

    Shauna,

    Speaking of breaded fish, I remember that the original recipe for fish and chips uses rice flour instead of wheat. It only makes sense that GF fish tastes good!

    Personally, I think all GF food is better than wheat food. Wheat has the advantage of being around for generations. The recipes have been perfected.

    Now we have people like you who are dedicated to perfecting the GF recipes. I believe that all the GF food will eventually be better than the wheat food. Some of it already is better.

    Take care,

    Shoshannah (who is on her way out the door to lend your book to a great chef)

  11. Karen

    Wow, I bet this is a good college food option for Carmen. Thank you for always bringing new ideas to the gluten free table.

  12. Georgia Pellegrini

    I like good canned tuna the simple way — with a little rice vinegar mixed in. This is the perfect match.

  13. I Am Gluten Free

    Cool! I just went to the Starfish website and they are sold at Costco! Thanks for the heads up!

  14. The French

    The rice vinegar, I’m totally down with. I love rice vin. Think I’ve used Nakano before and will again.

    As for the fish, I try to stay away from processed food, but glad to know it’s there for those who want it:)

  15. Karen

    I’ll have to check out the Nakano vinegars.

    I’m a huge fan of Sushi Chef seasoned rice vinegar (they just call it “sushi vinegar”), which has a more interesting flavor than any of the others I’ve tried, but I’ve not tried Nakano.

    I put it in EVERYTHING. Seriously, if I’ve made anything from a meat-based meal to a vegetarian one, and the flavor seems.…oh, kind of bland, I’ll splash in some rice vinegar and it is immediately improved. I’ve found it especially useful in soups.

    So, yeah, the more people who discover this miracle ingredient, which adds flavor without imposing its own, the better!

  16. Sugar House Cookies and Cakes

    Wow, that’s awesome! Now for a question. I was raised on frozen fish sticks. You know the kind, in the yellow box. I’ve never had anything “real.” What kind do you suggest for someone who is new to the fish world; halibut, cod, or haddock?

  17. Wendy

    Thank you for your blog Shauna. I have learned so much from you and enjoyed hearing you on NPR earlier this week. I was listening to a delayed podcast so couldn’t call in to tell you how grateful I am for your blog and your knowlege has helped me as I navigate this new to me Celiac’s. Really looking forward to your cookbook and I wish so much that I could make it to the farm dinner to meet you. I hope you do it again sometime as we are out of town for this one.

  18. RebTien

    I’m trying the Starfish Cod tonight in blue corn tortilla fish tacos with shredded radicchio, avocado-cream sauce, local tomatoes and salsa verde. Mmmmmm. It’s only 3:55 pm and I’m ready for dinner.

  19. RebTien

    To Nancy G: I often use cider apple vinegar instead of malt vinegar although I bet rice wine vinegar would be yummy too.

  20. Dianne K

    OH… yes! We tried the Starfish GF halibut tonight for dinner — thanks to your recommendation. I absolutely LOVE fish tacos, so this is going to bring one of my favorite foods back into my life. Thank you!!!

  21. Ms. Miller's Third Grade

    I bought the starfish halibut a while ago and was so impressed! This fish is amazing! I found it at my local Thriftway!

  22. Jennifer

    I tried the Starfish GF Halibut tonight for dinner and we all liked it! Thanks for the idea!

    We were one eater short tonight (one at camp) and the box served the other 3 of us just right. It says 3 servings on the box; sometimes that stretches to 4 for us but this would not have without lots of extra sides — not a complaint, just a word of warning for those who might try to feed 4 on one box — you probably can’t. But it is very tasty fish!

  23. Kathy A.

    I’m not much of a cooked fish person, but on a whim I tried the Starfish halibut after reading your post. Oh. My. Goodness. This will be a regular meal in our house from now on. Thank you!

    (A heads up to people trying to find it — I’ve now seen it at two stores, and both times it was in with all the other fish, not segregated in the GF ghetto. I almost missed it because it wasn’t with the GF stuff.)

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