Yukon River King Salmon More Than A Pretty Face

By Laura Oppenheimer in Food on Jun 26, 2007 4:00PM

When Shaw's Crab House invited us by to try their new Yukon River King Salmon last week, to say we were skeptical would be an understatement. Salmon has simply stopped wowing us, mostly because the majority of salmon served in restaurants and in stores today is farm-raised. Farm-raised salmon is inferior to wild salmon in nearly every category, most notably in flavor and texture.

Still, we went to Shaw's with an open mind, interested to see what all the hype was about. Chicagoist is happy to report that Yukon River king salmon isn't hype — it is the real deal. One bite of this piece of fish, and all of our salmon preconceptions went out of the window. Where other salmon tastes overly fishy, this fish had a clean, pure salmon taste. Beautifully colored too, it had the most amazing texture of any piece of salmon we had ever tried.

The reason? These fish swim over 2000 miles to their spawning grounds, meaning they have more body fat than other salmon varieties. A lot more fat. Some tests have found the Yukon salmon to have 34% oil content; a "normal"piece of salmon has 17 %. Imagine the delectability of biting into a juicy steak, cooked medium rare. Now think of that same bliss, but put a salmon in its place. In a word, phenomenal.

You can learn a lot more about the different kinds of wild salmon and what makes one taste different from another from Gourmet Contributing Editor John Rowley. The Yukon River salmon is only available at Shaw's for a few weeks, due to its short season, so interested parties should check it out sooner rather than later.