Enjoying wild-caught seafood in a wrap is an easy way to play around with texture, flavor, convenience, and drama in the home kitchen. Whether you’re wrapping with banana leaves, puff pastry, or good ol’ flour tortillas, each of these culinary components has its own particular qualities that can completely alter how your meal shapes up. Literally.
Here’s a breakdown of what a diverse selection of wraps can add to your wild-caught seafood recipes.
For Crisp Texture
If you’re looking to add a component of crispiness to your recipe without having to add breading or a crust to your seafood, consider using something like a lettuce wrap. It will add refreshing texture to your meal while keeping things light. This is a great option for you if you’re shifting to a low-carb or whole food diet. Lettuce wraps also open up the possibility of serving your seafood bo ssam or taco night style, where everyone at the table can build their own meal. Pro tip: To get your lettuce wraps extra crispy, soak them in a bowl of ice water for 15 minutes before setting them out to be used. These poached salmon lettuce wraps from Paleo Magazine are topped with a fresh cucumber-citrus salad and avocado to make them even more substantial and heart-healthy.
On the other end of the wrap spectrum, there’s puff pastry. Puff pastry, or phyllo dough, is made up of leaf-thin layers of buttery pastry dough, pressed together into sheets that puff up until a flaky golden crust. If you’ve never used puff pastry before, don’t be intimidated: It does all of the rising itself once it hits the heat of your oven. Use the pastry as a blanket in which to wrap your seafood, baking everything together until you’ve got a brown and crispy exterior surrounding a moist, flaky interior. Check out our blog post on puff pastry for some ideas on how to use this decadent wrap.
For a Cutlery-Free Meal
Flour tortillas are obviously a classic choice for burritos and deli-style wraps for a fully-contained meal that has no boundaries. Sturdy enough to hold just about anything, flour tortillas can be filled with whatever combination of ingredients you like. They’re also easily transportable, making them great for picnic lunches in the park when you want to enjoy your seafood al fresco. Food Republic’s recipe for Jamaican jerk fish wraps, great with cod, are perfect for a backyard grill sesh.
As a health-conscious alternative, try making your wraps with big leaves of collard greens. They’re large and sturdy enough to hold a full meal, but give you the option of having a wrap that is gluten-free and packed with all the nutrients you love from greens. Use them raw if you enjoy the leafy texture of collards, or blanch them in water until they soften a bit -- less than a minute, followed by an ice bath to halt the cooking process -- and then roll up your meal. If you’re using them raw, you’ll want to shave off a layer of the greens’ stalks or remove them altogether to make the wraps more pliable. This recipe from Dr. Mark Hyman goes the blanching route to wrap up a tasty wild salmon salad, which is a great use of leftover salmon.
For Your Favorite Asian-Inspired Dishes
Also healthy and harvested from the sea, the ocean-y flavor of seaweed is a natural complement to a Asian-inspired wraps and rolls made with wild-caught seafood. Japanese-style nori is ideal for making perfectly composed maki rolls, while Korean-style roasted seaweed — a bit thinner and crispier — is great cut up into squares to use as makeshift, hand-rolled wraps for a family-style spread of components. The flavor profile of your seafood isn’t limited to anything Asian-ish; get creative and start playing around with ingredients, spices, and sauces to figure out what tastes good to you. Try out a basic recipe like this one from Martha Stewart, which uses baked rather than raw salmon, then let your imagination run wild.
For something that’s more reminiscent of Southeast Asian cuisine, use rice paper wraps to make fresh summer rolls filled with wild-caught seafood and veggies. Rice paper wraps are foolproof once you get the hang of hydrating them to the perfect consistency. The chewy rice paper is a great contrast to crispy fillings, wrangle up some raw or pickled veggies and tender, fresh herbs to accompany your protein of choice. Tyna Hoang’s recipe for Vietnamese turmeric fish summer rolls — she suggests using halibut — is a bold take on this classic item, using pineapple, ginger, and plenty of garlic in her filling.
For a Perfectly Steamed Parcel of Seafood
Not all wraps are meant to be eaten. Both banana leaves and corn husks can be used to wrap up raw seafood into a neat parcel, along with a selection of other components, then steamed to perfection on a grill or on the stovetop. Each leafy wrap will impart a hint of flavor to your dish, enhancing its aromatic qualities while giving your recipe some interactive, dramatic appeal; careful when opening up these wraps, as they will release a puff of fragrant, delicious steam. Try making this Yucatan-inspired recipe from Food & Wine for black cod steamed in banana leaves with a citrusy achiote paste.
