The shocking truth about skate wings

The shocking truth about skate wings

“People who live in Paris eat much better skate than people who live at the seaside”… or so claimed the much-respected French 18th-century Treatise of All Sorts of Foods.

It seems mad to us ardent proponents of the mantra “fresh is best” that anyone would suggest fresh fish gets better with age. Especially as most of the engineering efforts of the late 18th and 19th centuries revolved around creating better transport, simply to get fish from the harbours to the cities in double-quick time.

Laws were even altered in mediaeval Britain to allow herring and mackerel to be sold on Sundays. They were the only species permitted for trade on the Sabbath, and the only reason was, if those fish hung around until Monday, they’d be rank and inedible.

Most dead fish get progressively worse for wear as every moment passes. It’s why we’re so keen on selling our seafood the day it’s caught! But interestingly, not skate and rays. The opposite is true for these species. If you’re going to eat the wings from a skate, then it’s better to keep them for a couple of days before you introduce them to your hot skillet and your caper-speckled pan of black butter sauce.

So, what is a skate?  

Skate and rays are really the same family and often exactly the same species. It’s just that the names have got confused and overlapped over the centuries. 

Fishmongers, chefs and chippys talk about ‘skate wings’, yet these are actually wings removed from thornback, homelyn and undulate rays.

There’s a whole mess of regional differences where rays are called skates in various parts of the country.  But, in truth, the correct term of ‘skate’ only really applies to the much bigger species of fish caught from deeper water. These are often in excess of 100 pounds, have much longer pointed snouts and are exceptionally rare – so best avoid eating!

A ray wing on the other hand could be any one of ten different species of ray we have swimming in our waters here in the UK. We catch lots on the Rockfisher and have even taken part in numerous science expeditions tagging the different species of ray to track their migrations.

So, I’m eating a ray wing?

Correct! Both skate and ray are cartilaginous fish as opposed to bony fish. This means that like their close cousin, the shark, they have a totally different internal bone structure to round fish like cod and haddock.  They don’t have proper calcium-built bones or a skeleton with a curved rib cage.  Instead, they only have a central spinal cord with a fan-like collection of cartilage ‘fingers’ spreading into their wings.

If you’re looking to introduce someone to seafood, we’d always recommend ray wings, their lack of bones makes them a treat to eat. Cooked correctly, the meat on a ray wing simply falls away in glorious rich, buttery, curds – the taste of which would make even the staunchest fish fuss pot go weak at the knees.

They sound delicious!

They are! The problem is a fresh ray wing stinks. The smell of a freshly caught wing is like very potent dog wee.  Disgusting.  And, as a result many a fisherman has ended up with a fridge that smells like a Portaloo at a German beer festival. And a pair of lovely wings in the dustbin.

Ray wings, when they’re fresh, smell of urea; a constituent part of urine, which most fish lovers would agree is not the best aroma to emanate from your dinner.

The reason skate smell like donkey piss is because the urea in their flesh is an integral part of their survival. All seafish have a battle with salt. The salt contained in seawater is continually trying to leach any moisture out of the fish, which if they didn’t have some chemical defence, would dehydrate, and kill them. Bony fish solve the problem caused by seawater using special chloride cells in their gills, which get rid of excess salt. Cartilaginous fish don’t have the same gill structure, so instead they maintain a supply of urea in their bloodstream, which reverses the tendency to lose water to the salt, and enables them to keep a healthy osmotic balance.

When they die, the urea starts to break down and produce ammonia.  The smell that you might experience in your fridge after a day, smells like potent cleaning fluid, which is caused by the increase in ammonia due to the gradual disappearance of the urea. The ammonia smell might be off-putting, but believe me, it’s better to eat a fish that once smelled of cleaning fluid than one that smelled of donkey wizz.

Doesn’t that make them disgusting to eat? 

Absolutely not. The smell of ammonia disappears completely during cooking. Despite being a little shocking, the ammonia smell is actually a good thing as it indicates the flesh is healthy and is purging itself of urea. 

Which is why it’s better to eat a skate which has travelled inland to Paris for a couple of days, rather than one that’s just flopped off the boat.

Even here at Rockfish, where we pride ourselves on serving the very freshest fish money can buy, we’ll make sure to keep our ray wings a couple of days before showing them the hot floor of our frying pan.

Hang on... if you’re just eating the ‘wing’ what happens to the rest of the ray?

Beady. Yep, it’s true, a ray’s wings are really the most delicious and user-friendly part of it. The rest, meanwhile, we save for Dennis...

And Dennis is...?

Just one of our favourite Brixham landmarks. Dennis has been fishing the waters here in Devon since he was a young lad – he’s now a strapping fit 82-year-old. Dennis is a lobster fisherman, so it’s this time of year, when the ray catching is good, that we’re lucky enough to see a lot of Dennis as picks up all the unused carcasses (minus wings) to bait his pots with.

We’re particularly lucky if he then returns with a box of great big lobsters. Yes, we really are zero waste!