What To Know Before Buy Caviar

Caviar - The Essentials

Before you buy caviar let’s see the essentials you need to know about this luxury delicacy.  

Caviar is unfertilized eggs - also known as roe - collected exclusively from the sturgeon fish family.

It always has a spherical shape, while the color can range from black to deep green, depending on the specific variety. It has a delicate taste and is not too fishy or salty, but rather soft and buttery. It can sometimes taste like a hazelnut.

Fresh caviar should be stored at temperatures between 32 and 45 ° F (0 and 7 ° C) otherwise it spoils quickly. For better storage it is pasteurized. The original caviar is produced in Russia and Iran, in Caspian and Black Seas.

Until a few decades ago, caviar was harvested from wild sturgeon swimming in the Caspian and Black Seas. The fisherman captured the fish, cut the "roe bags" holding the eggs and threw the fish back to die. This overfishing put critically endangered wild sturgeon.

Fortunately, nowadays most of the caviar in the world is grown in sustainable farms all over the world, from China in the Middle East to Madagascar.

More than 20 years ago, Mitchell and acclaimed chef Daniel Boulud set up a scoring system - known as "The Three Ts" - to rate caviar:

Taste: there should be no bitter, salty or unpleasant tastes.

Texture: the eggs should be tight enough that you can separate them with your tongue and pop them when you push them up in your mouth.

Tone: their color (the tone) should have a clear color with a nice shine.

Also, is good to know before buy caviar that should have low salinity, a rich buttery flavor and leave no flavor afterwards. A good rule of thumb is to treat caviar like oysters, if it tastes wrong, it is probably either old or of poor quality.

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