Sardines In A Pouch

Love 'em or hate 'em, there is one thing no one can deny about sardines: they are fragile little things, and don't take well to being indelicately handled. More than once, a little fishy morsel has broken off and tumbled back to the plate when I've tried to lift it whole with my fork.

You'd think that, of all the people familiar with sardines in the world, the people who actually process and package and sell them would know this. Apparently not, because Crown Prince actually has tried selling sardines in pouches.

When I saw these at Big Lots! it was almost mandatory that I buy them.  I couldn't think of a more ridiculous way to pack sardines, and I couldn't wait to find out what they were going to be like when I opened them up at lunchtime.  I could just imagine what they would look like after having been tumbled through the wholesale and retail distribution chain without the traditional exoskeleton of a metal can, and I was sure it wasn't going to be pretty.

I opened the first pouch - sardines in soy oil, lightly smoked - and tipped them out onto a plate.  "Not pretty" was an understatement. These fish had the shit kicked out of them. I think there might have originally been four whole sardines in the package, but without the help of a forensic ichthyologist, there was no way to tell.  I found some fair-sized fish chunks, lots of little pieces, and plenty of tiny fragments and soft-cooked bits of rib bones.  There were also some long, semi-crunchy lengths of spine. I never remove the spines or other bones when I eat whole sardines, so I didn't bother trying to remove them when I ate these.  The fish tasted fine, although the texture was a little dry despite having been packed in oil.  And of course, there was the horrifying presentation.

The second pouch were sardines in mustard sauce.  These fish had successfully retained their shape, probably thanks to the high-viscosity mustard sauce which had the consistency of gear oil and likely provided some shock absorption during shipping. Unfortunately, Crown Prince's mustard sauce isn't the best I've ever had; it is strong and rather harsh and covers, rather than enhances, the flavor of the fish.

The final pouch, containing the sardines in "Louisiana hot sauce" (not pictured) was sort of in between the other two in terms of sardine integrity. The fish were broken but not mangled but I can't really attribute that to the presence of sauce.  As interpreted by Crown Prince, "Louisiana hot sauce" is a quantity of oil colored bright red by the clots of brownish-red pepper sauce which are suspended within it. It adds little to the flavor of the sardines, but does add a mild but irritating back-of-the-throat scratchy heat in the manner of cayenne pepper powder.

It is no surprise to me that the only place I have seen sardines-in-a-pouch offered for sale is at Big Lots. Only a job lot store could possibly sell them with a straight face, and a quick check of Crown Prince's website shows me that they don't even list this packaging option as one of their products.  Hopefully, sardine pouches were a marketing experiment that won't be repeated.