You Don’t Always Have to Thaw Seafood to Have a Great Meal

One of the great joys of cooking wild-caught Alaskan seafood from frozen is this: you don’t have to plan ahead to have an excellent meal. You can go from the panic of “What am I making for dinner?” to the sheer joy of enjoying a nourishing meal in surprisingly little time.

On a culinary and philosophical level, I truly believe Alaskan seafood’s convenience and versatility is precisely why it’s so incredible, and cooking from frozen that convenience and versatility into action. A reaffirmation that Alaskan seafood isn’t solely a protein for special occasions, but also a building block for everyday meals. 

This is something I quickly learned when I was first getting to know my Alaskan husband Arron Kallenberg, WAC founder + CEO, who for breakfast, without much fanfare or premeditation, would reach into the freezer for a portion of sockeye to scramble into a pan of eggs. From frozen! It’s something I never would have thought to do, out of fear that I’d “ruin” good fish. 

But seeing an Alaskan — whose relationship with wild salmon is grounded in respect and reverence — cook wild salmon so casually was precisely the permission I needed to unlearn everything I knew about seafood’s place in my kitchen and in my life.

So this week, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite WAC offerings that I especially love when I’m cooking from frozen: 

Sockeye Salmon Portions

Sockeye is probably my favorite species to cook from frozen overall. Because it’s a relatively small species of wild salmon, the portions tend to be slightly thinner than other wild Pacific species like king or coho. So sockeye cooks more evenly from frozen, retaining a juicier flake. Toss a frozen sockeye portion into the air fryer with your favorite sauce, or try this elevated recipe for crispy seared sockeye with brown butter caper sauce — it’s done in 20 minutes, straight from the freezer, and yet it feels fancy. 

Wild Alaska Pollock Quick Cuts

These are one of my year-round favorite freezer shortcuts for soups. You can add them straight out of the freezer into brothy summer meals — corn chowders, light curries, cioppino-type stews. During the final 10 minutes or so of cooking your soup, you can simply drop in a pack or two of Quick Cuts to poach gently until flaky and cooked through. 

Sockeye Salmon Burgers

In my opinion, salmon burgers actually cook better from frozen. Whether you’re grilling, pan-frying, or air-frying, they stay nice and juicy and even pick up a little crisp on the surface, And because they’re already seasoned, your meal is basically halfway done for you before you even start cooking. As an added note of versatility, you can treat these like a fish cake and enjoy them alongside a salad, tucked into a grain bowl, or simply with a little dipping sauce. 

Sablefish with Miso Marinade & Sockeye Salmon with Teriyaki Glaze

These are two of my absolute favorite effortless freezer-to-table offerings because the flavor work has already been done for you (with high-quality, intentionally sourced ingredients, I might add). Both the miso marinated sablefish and the teriyaki glazed sockeye cook beautifully from frozen — especially in the air fryer, though baking and broiling work wonderfully too. Add rice, quinoa, noodles, or whatever vegetable situation you have on hand, and you’ve got a nicely composed meal that doesn’t eat like a shortcut.

Snap-and-Eat Crab

I’ve been writing about Alaskan crab a lot lately, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it this week too. Technically, this one isn’t “cooking from frozen” because the crab is already fully cooked for you — but it absolutely belongs on this list. You can steam Snap-and-Eat crab straight from frozen to enjoy with a dipping sauce, warm it through in something like a tomato-y fisherman’s stew, or even treat yourself to an impromptu, personal-sized crab boil. 

Before I close out this week, I want to give a shoutout to the exclusive What’s Cooking Tonight Facebook community, where fellow WAC members are always posting great meals that they’ve cooked — including dishes cooked from frozen. The WAC fish family is one of this company’s greatest resources, and I’m forever inspired by the potential that Alaskan seafood has to create shared experiences in home kitchens across the country.

Live Wild,

Monica

Pictured above: A pair of frozen wild salmon portions on a plate. Notice that icy exterior? Don’t mistake it for freezer burn — it’s an ice glaze that’s added to the fish that helps to better preserve it at peak quality.