A researcher at Norway's Nofima institute has shown that heads, bones, skin and other leftovers from salmon and cod processing can be blended with plant proteins into hybrid seafood, a way to use more of each fish and to improve on fully plant-based fish, Green Queen reported. The work was part of the HybridFoods project of Nofima and the University of Bergen.
Up to 60% of a salmon or cod is discarded when it is cut into fillets, and these sidestreams mostly go to animal feed, fertiliser or biofuel even though they contain valuable protein, minerals and healthy fatty acids. In her PhD project, Liv Helene Sickel combined salmon and cod by-products with pea protein and wheat gluten and used extrusion to give the mix a fibrous, meat-like texture.
A higher share of fish made the product softer, depending on the ingredient and the processing. A salmon protein hydrolysate, whose proteins are broken down into amino acids and small peptides, behaved much like added water in a dough, which means some water can be replaced with protein concentrate to raise nutritional value without changing texture much. Cod protein powder also softened the product, so Sickel raised the processing temperature; the result contained 25% fish and had a texture similar to a plant-based reference.
Nofima says the findings could help companies develop blended fish burgers and nuggets and make better use of marine sidestreams. "By creating opportunities to use more protein from fish we have already harvested, we could give the fishing industry an incentive to take better care of the raw material and use it in food," Sickel said.
Hybrid seafood is only starting to reach shops. In the Netherlands, Lou Foods launched a hybrid salmon fillet last year that combines salmon sidestreams with mycoprotein and plants, and this year added blended pollock and cod products with 40% plant-based ingredients. Blends can also make up for the protein and omega-3 that some fully plant-based fish alternatives lack.
The report was written by Anay Mridul.
Photo: NOAA's Historic Fisheries Collection / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Source: Green Queen
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