In the fourth lunar month, skip-the-oil-frying skipjack is in season - how do you tell it apart from the smoked tiger?

Text by Xu Chengyu, founder of Yongsheng Ocean

People often say that seafood should be eaten in season, but most people do not know which seafood is in season. Let me introduce a seafood in season in the fourth lunar month - the smoke fish (skipjack)!

The smoke fish, commonly known as the smoke pipe fish, is a skipjack of the genus Katsuwonus, with 2 types, the flat skipjack and the round skipjack, and it is also the smallest and most common skipjack. Other common skipjacks in Taiwan, China include the larger dogtooth tuna (commonly known as flower smoke, with 3 black spots behind the pectoral fin) and the true skipjack (commonly known as rolling-back, with 4-5 black vertical bands on the belly).

Skipjack meat is all red, whereas the meat of the streamlined spinefoot (commonly known as smoke tiger), which is easily confused with skipjack, is white, and its black vertical bands are on the back. The season of the smoke tiger is the birthday of the Earth God, that is, the second lunar month, unlike the other "smoke" (skipjack) fish!

Fourth lunar month skipjack is fat and tender, no oil frying needed

Skipjack is affordable and easy to catch, so in the early days it was a home-style seafood for fishing families. People who often eat skipjack along the coast (those living in fishing villages) found that skipjack in the fourth and fifth lunar months each year is the fattest and tastiest, hence the saying "no oil frying needed", meaning the flesh is incomparably fat and tender.

Unfortunately, modern city dwellers do not know skipjack, so even the fourth-month smoke fish is almost always caught in large quantities and sent directly to factories as raw material for processing and as bait. In fact, skipjack milt (sperm sac) is also a very famous delicious seafood; and these seafoods can all be cooked at home in very simple ways!

Skipjack meat, eggs, and milt - delicious cooked this way

How to cook skipjack meat: steam the whole fish or boil it in salt water; after cooking, the meat can easily be divided into left and right sides and taken off, then eaten with whatever seasoning you like. You can also rub the steamed/boiled fish meat with salt and fry it until fragrant, to experience what "no oil frying needed" means (though I suggest still using a little oil, as it may be easier to cook).

How to cook skipjack milt: blanch until cooked, then dip in wasabi soy sauce and eat
How to cook skipjack eggs: rub with salt, fry until fragrant, and eat

In-season wild seafood is also the breeding season, so restraint is still needed

Because Taiwan, China has many kinds of marine ecosystems, the in-season seafood varies from place to place. The most famous is probably the mullet that migrates to spawn at the winter solstice, "winter solstice mullet, fatter than a pig's trotter ring", and Penghu, where seafood customs are closely tied to daily life, also has a bunch of proverbs related to seafood seasons, such as "spring