Jack fish, also known as jack crevalle, is a popular game fish found in warm ocean waters around the world But despite its popularity among anglers, many people wonder – can you eat jack fish? And if so, what does it taste like and how do you cook it? This in-depth guide will tell you everything you need to know about eating this unique fish
Jack fish belong to the Carangidae family which includes pompano, amberjack, and trevallies. They are large, fast swimmers with torpedo-shaped bodies, forked tails, and sharp gill covers Their coloration is dark blue or green on the back, silvery sides, and a white belly
Jack fish can reach up to 5 feet long and over 50 pounds, although smaller 1-3 foot juveniles are more common. They are voracious predators that hunt in schools and are found in tropical and subtropical oceans worldwide. Places like the Caribbean, Hawaii Florida and the Gulf of Mexico have abundant jack populations.
Anglers love targeting jacks for their aggressive bites and acrobatic jumps when hooked. They put up a tough fight on light tackle. While fun to catch, many anglers consider them nuisance fish and do not eat them due to concerns about taste and texture.
Is Jack Fish Edible?
The short answer is yes – jack fish are edible. They have been consumed by coastal communities in tropical regions for centuries. Countries like Mexico, Cuba, and parts of the Caribbean and Asia prize jacks for food.
However, jack fish are not typically as desirable eating as other sport fish like mahi mahi, tuna, or salmon due to their very firm texture and strong flavor. Their edibility also depends on the size, age, and part of the fish consumed. Smaller, younger jacks tend to taste better than larger, older fish.
What Does Jack Fish Taste Like?
Jack fish have a moderate to strong flavor depending on size. Their firm, flaky white flesh is similar to mackerel or bluefish. The meat has a moderately high fat content which gives it a rich, fishy flavor.
Larger jacks can taste too fishy or muddy for some people’s tastes. Their flavor comes from their oil-rich diet of smaller fish like menhaden. Smaller juvenile jacks have a sweeter, milder flavor more comparable to mahi mahi.
Proper bleeding, icing, and cleaning helps reduce strong tastes. Still, their flavor may be too robust for people who prefer mild fish like tilapia or cod. Those who enjoy the full flavor of salmon, tuna, or mackerel may enjoy jack fish.
Nutritional Value of Jack Fish
A 3 ounce serving of jack fish contains:
- Calories: 119
- Protein: 22g
- Fat: 2g
- Omega-3s: 389mg
- Vitamin B12: 2mcg
- Potassium: 421mg
- Selenium: 27mcg
Jack fish are high in protein, vitamins, minerals, and heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. They are a lean source of protein with relatively low fat and calories. Eating jacks provides health benefits similar to other oily fish like improved heart health, brain function, and immunity.
How to Prepare Jack Fish
Proper preparation and cooking helps reduce any strong flavors in jack fish. Here are some tips:
- Bleed immediately after catching by cutting the gills or throat. Use a knife or nail.
- Keep the fish well-iced if keeping for eating.
- Fillet and remove all red meat, bloodline, and dark fatty tissue – these hold strong flavors.
- Soak fillets briefly in milk or a brine to help mellow taste.
- Marinate overnight in an acidic marinade with lime, lemon, or vinegar to tenderize and enhance flavor.
- Cook using moist heat methods like steaming, poaching, or baking. Quick pan-frying and grilling can also work well.
- Avoid overcooking which makes the flesh dry and tough.
Well-prepared jack fish with the dark red meat removed can have a pleasant flavor and meaty texture similar to tuna or swordfish. Frying small fillets makes excellent fish tacos or fish sandwiches. The meat also holds up well in chowders and fish stews.
Can You Eat Jack Fish Raw?
While some people do consume jack fish raw as sashimi or ceviche, this is not generally recommended. Larger jacks may contain parasites like nematodes or anisakid worms which are killed by cooking. Eating raw jack fish comes with a higher risk of parasitic infections compared to fully cooked fish.
If preparing jack fish for raw consumption, it should be flash frozen first to kill any parasites present. But even then, their dense texture and fishy flavor are less than ideal for sashimi or crudo. Jack fish are better suited for thorough cooking rather than eating raw.
Other Edible Jack Fish Species
While jack crevalle are the most widespread jack fish, there are other edible species of jacks and trevallies found around the world:
- Amberjack – Similar flavor to jack crevalle but easier to catch and prepare. Often smoked or grilled.
- Giant trevally – Larger predatory jacks prized for sashimi in Hawaii. Need to be bled immediately.
- Yellowjack – Related to jack crevalle but smaller and more yellow. Better eating with a sweeter flavor.
- Scad – Smaller schooling jacks often used as baitfish. Delicate flavor suitable for frying.
Of these, amberjack and scad are considered to have the best flavor and texture. But all the smaller jack fish species offer good eating with proper preparation and cooking.
Is Jack Fish Sustainable to Eat?
Jack fish are not currently overfished in most regions and have healthy, stable global populations. Regulations often exist on minimum size limits to allow juvenile fish to reproduce.
However, jacks school tightly in predictable locations. This makes them easy targets for exploitation if proper management is not practiced. Anglers should follow all local fishing regulations and avoid keeping or selling undersized fish.
Practicing moderation and only harvesting what you plan to eat makes jack fish a reasonably sustainable seafood choice. Considering their strong numbers, jacks can handle light recreational fishing pressure while supporting local food needs.
Popular Jack Fish Recipes
Here are some tasty ways to prepare your catch:
- Blackened Jack Fillet – Coat with Cajun spices and blacken in a hot cast iron skillet.
- Fish Tacos – Dice fillets and pan fry with onions and peppers. Add to corn tortillas with cabbage, avocado, and salsa.
- Ceviche – “Cook” diced jack in lime juice and serve with tortilla chips.
- Jack Chowder – Simmer chunks of jack in a creamy, tomato-based seafood stew.
- Grilled Jack Skewers – Marinate chunks in teriyaki or tandoori spices and grill.
Don’t limit yourself – experiment with stir fries, fish curry, steaming, smoking, or baking. A flavorful marinade helps boost more delicate flavors.
Can You Freeze Jack Fish?
Yes, properly cleaned jack fillets can be frozen for 4-6 months without losing quality. To freeze:
- Cut jack into portions and vacuum seal or wrap tightly in freezer wrap.
- Freeze rapidly at 0°F or below.
- Defrost in the refrigerator before cooking.
- Cook defrosted fish within 1-2 days.
Freezing helps breakdown tough connective tissues in jack flesh, yielding a more tender bite after thawing. It also locks in moisture and freshness.
Where to Buy Jack Fish
In the U.S., fresh jack fillets can be found at:
- Local fish markets, especially in coastal states like Florida and Hawaii.
- Asian and Hispanic specialty markets which sell whole fish.
- Some grocery store seafood counters, often labeled as amberjack.
- Online seafood retailers that overnight ship fresh fish.
If you catch your own, bleeding and icing the fish right after catching helps maximize flavor and texture. Keep the fillets well chilled if eating fresh.
Can You Eat Jack Fish Skin?
Jack fish skin is edible but the thick skin holds a strong flavor. It’s slimy texture and tendency to shrink when cooked also makes it unappealing. Most recipes call for removing the skin before cooking.
However, the skin can be fried into chips, though the flavor may still be overpowering. Younger jacks have thinner, more palatable skin than large fish. Many people prefer simply filleting their catch and skipping the skin altogether.
While not as popular as other sport fish, jack fish offer a unique, robust flavor for adventurous eaters. Their lean, firm flesh provides a satisfying meaty texture and excellent nutrition. Smaller jacks tend to taste better than large fish. With proper cleaning, chilling, and preparation, jack fish can make a tasty meal.
The next time you reel in one
Surprise! Jack crevalle are really not bad to eat.
Travis Anderson of Cocoa Beach with a big jack crevalle that he caught in 80 feet of water off of Sebastian Inlet.
Oh sure, you say, youve long heard of eating amberjack. Not AJs, their first cousins, fancy jacks like rainbow runners, bar jacks, or even yellow jacks, though. Crevalle jacks are what we’re talking about here. If you don’t already know how good jacks are to eat, skip to the next story. In the end, were two million Bahamians wrong about conch fritters? In the Bahamas and the rest of the Caribbean, all types of jacks are prized for their rich flavor and firm flesh.
So, if you want to ignore what’s about to happen and listen to what other people say, please let me make one simple point clear. Ask anyone who disparages the flavor of crevalle if they ever have eaten it. This is probably just a rumor spread by a fish lover a long time ago, so he could keep all the jacks to himself.
You dont have to do anything you shouldnt do with any other good fish you intend to eat. Step one being to immediately ice the fish alive, which does two really good things. First, it draws most of the blood into the fish’s organs, which helps the fish stay alive and makes the food taste better for you. What you think about a juicy beefsteak doesn’t matter; blood doesn’t change the taste or look of fish. When you killed a fish that was alive on a stringer or in a livewell, remember how much bloodier the second fillet was than the first? All the blood drained into the fish’s bottom.
Icing your fish alive remedies that problem almost completely. If you have time, cutting the fish’s gill arches while holding it overboard is a quick way to get rid of all the blood before putting it on ice. This is especially useful if you don’t have any ice to put it on. Advertisement.
The second thing ice does for a fish is make it firm, and thus ideal for slicing. Iced fish fillets look better, and they’re also much less likely to grow bacteria from the table where the fish was cleaned.
You can do a lot of fancy things with a fillet knife, like cutting out the red meat on the fillet to avoid the strong flavor. No, I didn’t do anything different with the three jacks I put through the stomach acid test. I always do the same thing with other fish. Unless you count taking them to a master chef.
For my test of crevalle I enlisted the help of Fort Myers chef Vollen Loucks. Vollen Loucks is not a 94-B-20-type Army cook like I was. Instead, he is a guy whose pinot noir sauce could turn tongue of combat boot into haute cuisine. Anyway, Vollen will be the first to admit that he doesn’t really like seafood. That didn’t stop salmon from being his restaurant’s best-selling item, though. Advertisement.
That’s why I showed up at Vollens’ back door with six ice-packed fillets of crevalle. The 2- to 3-pound fish had been moving around in the Punta Gorda Isles canals the day before, when it was very hot. When caught, they were bled, and within two hours of being iced, they were filleted and skinned. Other than that, they hadn’t been given any special care.
Vollen first looked at the fish’s texture and noticed that the flesh was very dense, like tuna. Each fillet that didn’t have any ribs was deboned by cutting out the pin bones that run down the middle of most fish from the head to the tail. The bones are more easily felt with a fingertip than seen. For a whole-fillet presentation, the pin bones can be cut out, leaving a V-shaped notch. Or the fillet can be cut in half lengthwise before the bones are sliced away. Vollen notched two fillets and cut the others in half.
Each piece of fish was seasoned with sea salt and white pepper. The first one was then dredged in flour and cooked for a minute or two on each side in vegetable oil that was hot and just starting to smoke. Vollen, being a compulsive chef, also added some roasted red peppers and smoked tomato meats, which were delicious but didn’t really change the taste of the fish. A California chardonnay was the white table wine he used. He lit the whole thing on fire like it was Disney World on the Fourth of July, deglazing the dish until the liquid was reduced to a beautiful sauce.
It’s clear that you agree that the last thing the cat dragged in would have tasted good if it was dressed up like that. That jack sure did, even by Vollens standards, but that was not the half of the experiment.
The next fillet was simply tossed on a 90,000-B. T. U. grill that etched dark brown crisscrosses into each side, while leaving clear juice in the center. Nobody could stop Vollen and his sauces. One of them was a purée made from prickly pears he picked from a cactus patch outside his back door. The sauce was beautifully drizzled and looked as good as it tasted. It did its job, though—it was just a nice addition to the grilled jack, which we all agreed tasted even better than the sautéed version.
I ate the whole fillet without taking a breath, like I did with the first one. I did this after giving Vollen a taste. For his last dish, he deep-fried the rest of the pieces that had been breaded in cornflakes and dipped in egg wash.
“Like everyone does crunchy grouper,” Vollen said, “everyone” being the competition in his tier of the restaurant trade.
There were two dressings he gave us to go with the crunchy jacks: a homemade rémoulade and a mango mayonnaise. If your arteries weren’t strong enough, you could eat both of them. Luckily, I was too full to do anything else but taste the combinations, which, as we knew by then, were both great.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to mess up a jack, save one. It can be sautéed, chargrilled, or fried crunchy. When I was a snook guide for a short time, I had a regular client from Long Island who loved light-tackle bluefish.
On one trip, he and his son-in-law doubled on a couple of usually vicious jacks that would have been over 10 pounds. He then asked if he could bring the fish home to eat for dinner. I knew he liked bluefish, so I told him that jacks weren’t poisonous. At the time, I had to admit that I had only tried them one way. That was smoked on a charcoal grill, after soaking the skin-on fillets in brine for 15 minutes. I didn’t say that I had a lot of cold drinks during the experience because I wasn’t sure if that had changed my opinion of the results, which I thought were good.
That seemed like a fair risk to me, so I bled and iced the fish and then made sure I got a full report on the results.
“Not bad,” he said of the jacks, which the whole family had eaten. “But the next time, I dont think Id soak them in brine. They were awfully bland. ” FS.
Florida Sportsman Magazine December 2002 Advertisement
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Is Jack Fish a good fish to eat?
Although not as widely sought after as other species, jack fish offers an exciting culinary experience that goes beyond the surface for both anglers and cooks.
Is it safe to drink water after eating jackfruit?
Drinking water after eating jack fruit can affect the stomach’s pH and slow the digestion, since water dilutes digestive acids and enzyme activity. So, it may provoke diarrhea.
Can You Grill Jackfish?
Acidic accompaniments like lime or tartar sauce can cut through the richness of jackfish’s dark meat. Choose between grilling outdoors or trying one of our delicious baked or broiled recipes. Happy eating. Looking for an easy and delicious way to enjoy eating fish? Try grilling jackfish for a smoky flavor that’s healthier than frying.
How do you eat Jack crevalle fish?
Impress your friends and family with this unique way of eating fish – Jack Crevalle fish cakes. Cooked jackfish meat is crumbled into small pieces and mixed with fillers like potatoes, onions, and bell peppers. Potatoes: Boil peeled potatoes until tender then mash them with butter, salt, and pepper.