I'm curious, have you ever heard of halibut cheeks?
I grew up in a family of halibut fishermen, so of course we always loved the cheeks.
In fact, I just got off the phone with my dad, and he asked me to double up on the halibut cheeks in his next box!
My dad always said that halibut cheeks are a fishermen's treat, because no one else knows about them. Rich says fishermen often fight over them because they're so rare - just two little cheeks per halibut.
But what are halibut cheeks?
They're just what they sound like. A little circle of meat cut from the head, between the collarbone and mouth.
Some people, and unfortunately some large processors, just toss the whole head, but we always save the cheeks!
We take the time to cut each individual cheek of the halibut because they are a delicacy, and also because we work hard to utilize as much of the fish as possible.
But we take it one step further.
We also want to teach our customers about all the parts of the fish and how to cook them so that together, we can savor every bit of this precious resource.
Halibut cheeks have the same pure, almost sweet flavor of halibut, but the texture is striated, sort of like a scallop.
They cook up very easily. I often sauté them in a pan like shrimp, or add them to noodles like shrimp linguine, but they can also be cooked in most halibut recipes (just cut the cooking time in half).
We'll be sharing more halibut cheek recipes this month so you can give them a try!
