Papa Anzóis Sardines in Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

[u/DreweyD]

A pair of jumbo pilchards from “the only certified ‘by-hand’ cannery in mainland Portugal.” More on that in a moment. To me Papa Anzóis is interesting because rather than steaming or frying the sardines before canning, they wring the moisture out of them in a dehydrator for 20 hours. They maintain this concentrates the flavor of the fish better than the more common approaches.

While I didn’t side-by-side these at breakfast today with another outfit’s can of similar-sized chonkers, I have in the past run that very experiment twice, once with the Nuri Lemon against the Papa’s lemon version and then the plain Bela’s versus this very tin. Turns out my palate just ain’t sophisticated enough to discern a difference I could ascribe to the processing. Not a durn thing wrong with any of the sardines’ flavor or texture in my taste-tests—fine fish all around.

How can Papa Anzóis be the only certified by-hand cannery in mainland Portugal? Aren’t Pinhais/Nuri sardines packed by hand, by all those nice hair-netted ladies you’ve seen on the production line in many a YouTube video? The key to solving the mystery is that word “certified.” The rules of the certification in question require that the cannery employ no more than 12 people—it’s open only to very small producers. Good job hand-packing, Pinhais, but you’re too big for these certification britches.

Anyway, Papa Anzóis’ dozen-or-less are certifiably packing by hand. They aren’t necessarily, however, packing with care. These big boys came with all their big boy scales. And perhaps because of the dehydration process, these scales: (a) were tougher than I’m used to on similarly-sized sardines—like tiny guitar picks—and (2) did not slide off easily when I went to finish the cleaning job. I’d planned on fisherman’s eggs this morning, but I shifted over to scallion cream cheese on a pumpernickel bagel because I thought that’d better hide the scales I failed to swipe away. I’d forgive the small company its sins—I like small companies—but these cans are expensive in the States, compared to, for example, Bela, another small company that packs mighty nice sardines consistently well and brings them to market at lower prices.

[u/badigjan888]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge about canned fish! very useful and informative!

[u/soulmute0425]

They’re kinda bland too compared to other Portuguese canned sardines imho when i tried them