Description
Ingredients: Tuna (skipjack – Katsuwonus pelamis)(65%), olive oil (28.1%), pickles (carrot 2.5%, cucumber 1.7%), Piri piri (1.7%), and salt.
Contains: Fish
The terms “spiced” and “spicy” are used pretty much interchangeably in the tinned fish world, to mean two different things: with a hot pepper (or hot pepper flavor), and with cloves/bay/carrot/hot pepper. There are many examples of both terms being used to mean both things.
We are so frustrated by how widespread this confusing inconsistent usage is that we’ve gone through our entire product line to correct the incorrect ones such that our description of “spiced” or “spicy” will always indicate which it really is, regardless of the packaging. “Spicy” = with hot pepper flavor. “Spiced” = with the cloves/bay/carrot/hot pepper flavors.
This one doesn’t fit neatly into either category as it has all the elements of Spiced except the Clove and Bay…so we call it Spicy.
dolson.drew (verified owner) –
Take this review with many, many grains of salt, because I am leaning towards the view that I might’ve just encountered a wildly oversalted can.
I like tinned seafood, I like tuna, and I have regularly liked Minerva products in the past. The packaging here states that it contains 300 mg of sodium, well within the normal range–which is wide–for such products. Here in my office stash, for comparison’s sake, two Don Gastronom tuna varieties list 570 mg and 390 mg, respectively, and one from Santa Catarina is 1.5 grams (!), and I’ve eaten and enjoyed each previously. And the “standard” Minerva skipjack in spicy olive oil states 700 mg.
Unfortunately, the particular can I opened today was too salty to enjoy. And not just a little bit too salty–a whole lot. I could not finish, or even put a dent in, my lunch, which was simply the contents tipped over sliced cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. I literally cannot remember a time when I chose not to eat a can of fish before–it may never have happened.
Will I order another of these Limited Edition skipjack tins? Perhaps not, although I’m super curious to learn if this was a one-off production strangeness. I am likely, instead, to reach for a can of the regular Minerva skipjack with spicy olive oil, since I know I’ve enjoyed that one in the past, and it’ll give me some frame of reference on my experience here. I mean Minerva does good things–I had the Limited Edition Sardines with Lemon and Thyme just yesterday, plus a regular tin of their lemony sardines to compare, and the salt levels were just right in my book.