Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Review: Gorton's Cajun Blackened Grilled Fillets


This is not my first time reviewing Gorton's grilled products and in fact, I've even given Buy It ratings before, so when I saw this Cajun Blackened Grilled Fillets on sale at Meijer for $3.99 (I also had a $1.00 off coupon), I was more than willing to pick it up and give another one of their flavors a try.  I like the spice of Cajun flavoring and I'm trying to find a way to like fish more (I realize this is frozen, so sue me), so this one was right up my alley.  This box contains two fillets weighing in at 3.8 ounces per fillet and each fillet contains 90 calories and packs a robust sixteen grams of protein.  Nice.  What I found interesting though was that the front packaging of the box did not tell you what kind of fish this was.  If you look at the back, you can see that it is Alaskan Pollock, but it just seems strange to me that the customer facing packaging is basically just labeling this as "fish" and that's it.



The picture above is what the fillets look like straight out of the box while still frozen.  As you can see, each fillet contains "grill" marks to continue the grilled theme of these products.  Also, the dark texture is the Cajun Blackening seasoning, so at least they are following through visually on what the promised.  For a size reference, each fillet is roughly the size of a deck of cards.  While still frozen, they have a strong "fishy" smell as well, which was kind of funny to me because I wouldn't expect to smell that until these were cooked.  As they cooked, the "fishy" smell just got stronger and stronger and that was off-putting to me.  I don't necessarily mind the taste of fish, but I don't like the smell of it.  Still, like the hardened food blogger that I am, I managed to find a way to soldier on. 


The picture above shows what these fillets look like when straight out of the oven.  The top one on the plate is the non-seasoned side and the bottom one is the "seasoned" side.  At first bite, my initial thought was "WOW, SALT!"  The salt in the blackening seasoning was overpowering.  I've had plenty of Cajun flavored dishes before, but I don't think I've ever tasted this much salt.  The seasoning was also spicy, but that was mostly masked by the OVERWHELMING salt taste and that was really unappealing.  As for the fish itself, it was flaky, moist and very "fishy," but I couldn't really concentrate on that as I was drinking water by the gallon to counteract the salt taste.  I almost didn't finish the two smallish fillets because of all the salt, but since there are starving people in Africa (as my mother always told me) and I was hungry, I finished the deed.  I wish I hadn't though.


Buy It or Fly By It?  Definitely FLY BY IT unless you are looking for a way to up you water consumption on a daily basis because you are going to need a lot of it to feel normal after eating this.  Pretty disappointing on this one because I had such high hopes before eating it.  Oh well, maybe the next Gorton's Grilled product won't let me down because I've got a freezer full of the other varieties!

FLY BY IT!!

1 comment:

  1. Hi! I’m Katie and I’m a member of the Gorton’s Crew. We are sorry for the experience you had with our product. This certainly does not meet our quality standards and is not typical. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We always want to hear feedback as satisfying our consumers is very important to us. Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns. We hope you enjoy the remaining Gorton's products in your freezer! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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