Five Simple Ingredients for Fabulous, Crowd-Pleasing Seafood

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Welcome to the Virgin Diet lifestyle show with your host, celebrity nutrition and fitness expert and New York times bestselling author, J.J. virginia.

Today we are talking simple seafood. If you're one of those people, goes, you know what? I'd love to eat more fish, I'd love to eat more shrimp, but what the heck do I do with it? It seems so hard to make. Well, I have got the solution for you because I got the fish guru with me. Yes. Jeff Moore is here from. I know. You're like, how did I get to be this fish guru? Well, you want to be fish king?

No.

No.

That's cool.

All right, fish Guru Jeff Moore, wildthingseafood.com and today we're talking about five ingredients. You're going to see six here, but we'll explain five ingredients that you can use to make any seafood taste awesome. All right, hit it.

Well, yeah, I get a lot of calls over at Wild Things Seafood from friends of mine saying, you sold me this fabulous barramundi or this great halibut, and now I'm at home and I don't know what to do with it. And, you know, there's very simple ways to cook seafood for me. I just like getting in my car and driving over their house and showing them. But that's not scalable.

That's why he's here today.

We're having some seafood after this, but they're simple ingredients. And once I start cooking for somebody, they go, that looks so easy. And so there are five simple ingredients that we have here. And what we start with, and I want to be very clear on what we're dealing with here, is a pure olive oil, not an extra virgin olive oil, a pure olive oil, because a pure olive oil has a higher smoke point. Okay.

And so, okay, that means go ahead.

And then I'm. It will not burn off and become rancid in the cooking process.

Very important.

Rancid oils are not good.

Rancid oils are damaged fats in your body. You do not want that. But I just taught him a little something. A little something something.

Yes, she did.

Because if we're looking for an oil with a higher smoke point, my personal favorite is macadamia nut oil. It is amazing. It's so delicious. So we know about coconut oil, but, you know, some people don't like the flavor of coconut oil. Can get a little funky with some of these fish. Although I like it. But macadamia nut oil is amazing. It's got a higher smoke point. So we're gonna.

Is the flavor like a good macadamia flavor?

Let's just try it, shall we? Here, I'm gonna pour some right into here. I just. I think this is just stick your little. You want to just guzzle that.

Oh, yeah.

Is that not awesome?

So that's like. Like, if you can do like a. Instead of doing a macadamia nut crusted seafood, which is hard, you can just use that and you're gonna get that same flavor.

And it's in it, by the way. It's so good for you. Macadamia nut oil is one of the healthiest oils out there. And isn't that delicious? It makes a great salad dressing too.

Oh, see? No, I wouldn't even see.

No, it's just awesome.

The wonders of macadamia nut oil.

Yes.

It's one of the ones people don't know about. And it's just incredible.

All right, be like Kramer and Seinfeld and put it all over my body and go out and lay out.

Yikes. That was a visual TMI from her.

Too much.

Okay. All right, moving on to spices. And then you could. You could put all over your body. Then you could. Then you could throw some herbs on.

Exactly. Okay, now I'm starting to get grossed out. So she's got some. Some great organic spices here. And this one is. Is a lifesaver. And I love this with fish that might have a more. Be more flavorful fish. By the way, fish should never taste fishy.

If it tastes fishy, what's the problem? What's that mean?

It's rotten. Okay, so this is a great spice here, and it's the lemon pepper spice. Okay, so people. People like to put a lot of lemon juice on their seafood. I like to do a lemon pepper on top of a nice wild salmon. Did it last Friday. Fabulous. Okay. And garlic pepper. This is also good with the lemon juice. So we're gonna have these lemons right here. Isn't there like a bottle of lemon juice that I can buy?

Well, so what, like those little lemon squeezy things like. So here's.

Aren't those the same? They say real.

Here's a lemon squeezy thing right here. All you do is cut it and you got a lemon squeezy. And this lemon squeezy doesn't have the phthalates that the plastic bottle that you're getting with the acidic lemon juice in the plastic bottle. You're getting a toxic hammer with that. You're not getting this. Can I do a little bit on my little bit on lemon juice now? Because you brought it up. Okay. Do you really have those squeezy lemon juice things at home? Will you promise? Look, look at me. You're going to get rid of that?

Yes.

Because he had to get rid of. He had the gluten containing garlic.

Garlic salt. Yeah. I'm like, come on.

Really?

Gosh, it's bad. Garlic salt bad. So here's the deal with lemon juice. So this is incredible. Lemon juice can actually lower your blood sugar response to a meal. So not only does it. Is it great on fish, and it's great lemon juice. And macadamia nut oil makes an amazing salad dressing with a little Dijon mustard. Make sure it doesn't have wheat flour in it, but use lemon juice in everything. Put some then in your sparkling water because it's going to just temper that blood sugar response. Of course, if you're eating fish for dinner with maybe some sauteed spinach, you're not going to go jack your blood sugar.

Right.

So, you know, that's the nice thing is no one says, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to have some wild salmon and a big baked potato with sour cream. Right, right, right.

Awesome.

Gosh.

All right, Moving right along.

You know, by the way, there is actually a tool.

Have you ever had. Have you ever touched. This is a lemon, by the way.

This is.

This is a lemon.

There is a tool that you could they use in the restaurant industry where they. It pokes straight into the lemon and then you just squeeze it and it literally. The spout comes out.

That's so cool.

I'll go find some.

I want one of those. I know a guy there, so. See, you don't need that. That seed. This then becomes the squeezy lemon, and it won't.

And it's got a little thingy on the top, the mesh thing, so the seeds don't go through the deal.

Good to know about the thingy.

So you got lemons. We got the garlic pepper, the lemon pepper, and then we need some salt. And not just table salt, because that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for sea salt and sea salt. I didn't know this about sea salt. I mean, probably until a couple of years ago, somebody said, salt, I'm going, boom, here you go. Some Mortons, you know, do the whole deal. And the chef that I was working with, he goes, don't ever put regular salt on seafood.

So you want to know. You want to know the deal? Regular salt is to separate sea salt. Like squeezy orange, squeezy lemons are the lemons.

There you go. It's bad.

Okay, so let's talk sea salt.

Sea salt is so wonderful because it literally brings out the flavor, or I'll use a little bit of term, the amplitude of the dish. And that means just the overall flavor.

Show off. Okay. But you know, sea salt from any sea salt, though? Yes. Not any. And we're going to shout off line to our producer now, because this is the most amazing sea salt of all. And you grind it fresh. But I do not remember the name because the company name changed. So what was the name of that sea salt again? It's Salt Revolution. Salt Revolution, from my buddy John. Course, that's a perfect name for someone who's producing salt. And it's from Aztec. And it is. Honestly, he sends it to me. I'm like, salt, sea salt, sea. I'm a big connoisseur of sea sea salt. Like, I've got. When I go to Hawaii, I get all their different ones. This sea salt rocks. And I want you to think of sea salt like you're taking a supplement. People get all scared of salt. Well, get scared of table salt. Run away. Run away fast. But sea salt, yes, sea salt is an amazing supplement because you're getting in all the minerals. I mean, if you're getting table salt, what they've done is they've taken that salt, they've taken all the minerals out, and they sold them to supplement companies. When you get real sea salt, you can bathe in this. It's detoxifying. It's amazing stuff. You can.

You can get a lot of sea salt.

You can exfoliate. Yeah, well, especially after we get all the oil out of the gill. You know, he's got the oil and the herbs, and then we're throw them in the bath. I mean, just so you really get the visual. And we'll have to use the salt.

And then I'm going to get the barrel of wax for the bikini Wax.

You know, you just. Just over there.

We'll cut that out.

Just duct tape him, please. So the sea salt's got all these great minerals in it. And if you're one of those people who's stressed, are you a little stressed? You know who's not stressed? You. Actually, one of the things adrenal glands need is a little sea salt. So this is an important nutrient. And for fish, what does it do? Brings out the flavor of.

Brings out the flavor.

Brings out the amplitude.

Elevates the.

Elevates the amplitude.

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But here's the thing, okay? So now everybody's like, hey, I'm afraid still of cooking seafood. And you know, I forgot the thawed out. You know what? It doesn't matter. Seafood can be cooked from frozen. There's actually a great website.

I didn't know that And I did something. You looked at me like I looked at you with the squeezy lemon. So you can do this to me because I did it to you. I told you that. I know. I was like, go ahead, try. I took my frozen seafood and I put it into a. I hate telling you this. I put it into a bowl in the. Under the water, and I put hot water on it.

Hot water.

And to defrost it.

Wonderful.

Before I cooked it. And why is that a boo boo?

It just. Well, it starts cooking the fish one you don't want. And when it's in its package, it's got anaerobic things going.

Then we got some phthalates coming in from the plastic. Well, I pulled it out of its place. Plastic. I did not do that, because that would be stupid. And I don't want the phthalates in there. But still, I'm now doing, like a slow boil.

You are. And you know what? A nice, cool water is going to thaw that fish. But you don't have to worry about that either. There's a website called cookitfrozen.com and it's actually put out there by the Alaska Seafood Marketing institute. So it's cookitfrozen.com and they literally show you take the seafood out of its package, rinse in cold water, rinse the glaze out, and you can bake that, grill that, saute that from frozen.

That is so awesome. Okay. But here's my big question, because I know that we are going to have those snow crab claws.

Cocktail claws. Yes.

With this grass fed, salted, sea salted butter, which is like my most favorite thing on the planet. Same with my. My teenage son Grant is, like, hooked on this. We fight over them.

It is fabulous.

But they're frozen, so. And I don't want to eat them frozen.

No.

And I don't want to eat them hot. So how do I get those how I want them to be?

Well, this is. Okay, so what I'm about to tell you is the same way that you would rinse and prepare snow crab cocktail.

Claws without cocktail sauce. We don't do cocktail sauce.

No cocktail sauce.

Because that is sugar. It's like, you know, it's sugar.

The same way you would prepare a cocktail shrimp. When you get it at the store and you want to come out, the thing you want to make sure is that you're rinsing this product off. Okay. Because it's been frozen in waters and, you know, it might not taste great, but when you rinse it off with a nice cool fresh water. It's going to make it taste cleaner. And so the best thing to do is to get a colander or as a friend of ours, Joe Polish, wants to. No, it's a spaghetti strainer. Yeah. He's like, why didn't you just call it that?

Because we don't eat spaghetti, Joe.

But you rinse it. Like if you've got one of those like sprinkly nozzles on your, on your sink, just take cold water and just have it drizzle right on there in a colander and do it for five minutes. It's going to thaw the glaze off out there. And it's going to also thaw the crab or the shrimp itself. And then you just put that into.

That's it. Five minutes and there it is. Five minutes. And all you do is heat up your amazing.

And then. Yeah. The warm drawn butter that you can actually buy@wildthingseafood.com Grass Fed certified organic.

And if you are in cycle one of the virgin diet, just do grass fed ghee. All right. But after that, I find most people are just fine with grass fed. Better with the sea salt. And honestly, this is one of those things that you can have friends over for dinner and. And you do this and they are going to rave. It is so delicious. And all you did was defrost one thing and warm up the other. That's how I like to cook.

People will walk in with cocktail shrimp and go, oh God, shrimp. Oh, that's fantastic. And they're doing the cocktail sauce and all that kind of stuff. When you come in with snow crab cocktail claws and warm drawn butter, everybody remembers it.

You own it.

You own the room ever, forever.

And so, you know, that's it. And I actually have the personal record for consuming them. So we'll be able to find.

Yeah. In your old days. Remember, too much healthy food is not healthy.

It's just too much food.

It's just too much food, babe. He's on the virgin diet. He's a work in Progress. He's lost 21 pounds in seven weeks and nine inches. And we've almost got his waist smaller than his hips. Stay tuned. Right, okay, so the big takeaway are the top five ingredients. You were going to say you were like.

I was just saying you can then once you, no matter where you are, just be able to feel comfortable baking it, sauteing it, grilling it. The one rule of thumb, if you've got like a halibut steak and you look and you'll see when it's thawed, it's kind of that translucence I guess is to say. And it's starting to turn white as it's cooking, cooking towards the center. When it's about a quarter inch thick, take it off the grill, it's done, it's ready to go. And that's what we do. I'll either do that with salmon, I'll do that with, I even cook skin on salmon and it's real easy to do as well. And we'll talk about that in another episode. But you know, it's just be comfortable cooking seafood and trying it out. And these ingredients are the starting point to making fabulous seafood awesome.

So this is all you need is I'm going to say macadamia nut oil. But if you are going olive oil, you do not do extra virgin here. You use that for your salad. And then the lemon pepper and the garlic pepper, fresh lemons and get the little squeezy tool. And then really good sea salt like our buddies John Course at Salt Salt Revolution. And this makes it so simple to do. You do not have to be afraid seafood anymore. It's your friend and you can make it fast and impress people and show off, right?

That's it. And that is, I mean and you know, people are afraid of seafood for some reason so they go out and have some seafood and it's expensive. You can cook great seafood at home and it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. And you can really do it consistently using just five ingredients.

It's actually one of the easiest things to do at home. A lot of that other stuff is of kind complicated. So if you'd like a free transcript of today's show, all you need to do is text 58885 and enter simple in the number one. Put a space, put your first name, another space and your email address again, that number is 58885 and you enter simple one space, your first name space and your email address. In the virgin diet I have you swap six, seven foods for three weeks to uncover your hidden food intolerance so that you can finally lose the weight and feel better fast. Why wait? Start those three weeks today.

Hey everyone, did you like this episode? Be sure to subscribe for the next one and tell a friend. If you'd like world class training and cutting edge information, visit thevirgindiet.com.

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