Named a way to choose a good red caviar: look at the month of manufacture

The choice is wide. Next to the store, on a folding table, there is a sale of red caviar at a price of 200 rubles per 140-gram jar. If you buy three, then a discount, they will be sold with chokh for 500 rubles. Goods, one might say, for the people.

The seller willingly answers questions regarding the low price (a year ago, also at the end of December, a jar cost 250 rubles, and three jars – 600) and the authenticity of the product. Caviar, he says, is real, from Kamchatka. In stores, according to him, “a solid mafia”, where the goods get through fourth hands. A manufacturer, an intermediary, then an intermediary on the railway, a base … At each transshipment, goods become more expensive by 150 rubles. And here (that is, on their table) – straight from the factory, and therefore cheap ..

What can not be said about the prices in the branded fish store nearby. There price tags, depending on the type of fish, range from 825 rubles (pink salmon caviar) to 876 (salmon caviar). Exactly a year ago, also at the end of December, pink salmon was 200 rubles cheaper.

In large supermarkets these days, red caviar is advertised with holiday discounts. A jar costs 370 rubles, almost two and a half times cheaper than in specialized trade. The discount is tangible, and this is not a dubious peddler with a folding table, but a real trade brand that has strict incoming goods control and which we, in theory, should trust. But…

– I fell for this advertisement in a supermarket, bought a jar, – an elderly woman shares her experience, who took a queue in a specialized fish store. – I thought, I’ll taste it and if I like it, I’ll buy four jars at once for the New Year – I’m expecting children and grandchildren to visit. Caviar will cost less than two cans in a company store.

– Well? the neighbors ask one by one. – Real?

“I haven’t tried,” she sighs. – I looked at home – 95 grams instead of 140. And it was made not according to GOST, but according to TU – technical specifications. Which are determined by the enterprise itself, as they want, they will do it. It turns out that the cost in terms of weight is almost the same, and even made according to a simplified scheme. Now I decided not to chase cheapness, I will buy pink salmon caviar for 825 rubles … …

Producers and trade unanimously explain the reason for the sharp (up to a historical maximum) rise in the price of red caviar this year by the failed fishing season. The catch amounted to about 260 thousand tons, almost half as much as last year.

True, on social networks, some producers of this delicacy say that perhaps the catch was not so bad, you can’t check the statistics of fish catchers. They also add that large volumes of salmon are traditionally exported, since prices there are higher. Partly for this reason, red caviar (together with red fish) once again set a “historical maximum record”, a kilogram in retail exceeds 6,000 rubles against an average price of 5,000 a year ago.

However, the problem with Putin actually takes place. Especially for the catch of pink salmon, which this season was neither in the waters of Chukotka nor off the coast of Khabarovsk. This can be seen even in the prices on the counter. Pink salmon caviar has always been much cheaper than chum salmon caviar: a year ago it was 630 rubles against 840. And today they are almost the same – 825 and 876.

What brings a huckster with a folding table closer to the people is a discount of 50 rubles per can. This is just a Christmas story: shadow trade, realizing that the people, who have become somewhat impoverished this year, should be given at least a sense of celebration. Probably, and the feeling of red caviar, which he sells. The official retail chain does not even make a purely symbolic discount …

Meanwhile, on the eve of the New Year holidays, the head of the Federal Agency for Fishery, Ilya Shestakov, assured that there would be no shortage of red caviar in Russia (Surely, at such prices, it can be in every village store: few people will buy it anyway!). And that the fishing industry, given the weak salmon season this year, wanted to ban the export of red fish and red caviar so that more would remain on the domestic market. But then she “wanted,” and salmon went abroad.

It must be borne in mind that, despite the high cost, red caviar can be falsified. Read the label on the package, the packaging of the contents should be from June to September, when salmon spawn.

But more and more often it is frozen, and it is no longer there. In many countries of the world, such a product – frozen caviar – is considered a waste product.

– In Russia, salmon caviar is produced either in the sea or in the coastal zone: Sakhalin, Vladivostok, and several other places, – explains Dmitry Edelev, Doctor of Medical Sciences. – If it is made in places where it has never been born – Moscow, Voronezh, Belarus, Poland, etc. – stay away from it. This means that before the caviar was packaged in jars, it was frozen. And it contains different chemicals: antibiotics, growth stimulants, dyes. Often such a product has an unnaturally bright color – specifically to attract the buyer. As a rule, it comes to Russia in frozen blocks from the USA or Canada.

– Is it something dangerous for health?

– Frozen caviar is safe from the point of view of bacteria, but it undergoes fat oxidation and tastes bitter. When frozen, ice crystals form, which destroy the caviar from the inside, turn its structure into broth or porridge. You can’t eat it! Do not be greedy, such caviar is not edible.

This year, as we noticed, a large number of caviar sold immediately in frozen form, and in plastic jars, appeared in stores. “No preservatives” – says the inscription on the package. With a certain technology and freezing time right at the place of extraction, such caviar can be very tasty (you need to keep it on the refrigerator shelf for a couple of hours to thaw it). However, since you won’t try it when selling it, there is a great risk of running into that very “bad” caviar.