I Tried And Ranked 6 Store-Bought Frozen Salmon Fillets

While we'd all love to purchase the freshest cuts of meat straight from the butcher, time and financial constraints often make that option nearly impossible. The same goes for seafood. A fresh piece of fish is hard to beat, but depending on your location and the season, it can be just as hard to find. While most grocery stores offer a variety of choices for non-frozen fish, sometimes heading to the freezer section for a package of pre-portioned filets simply makes life easier.

Of course, just because having frozen fish on hand is convenient doesn't mean choosing the right one is easy. I visited Aldi, Costco, Metro Market, Target, Trader Joe's, and Walmart to check out their frozen salmon selection. Each store offered multiple salmon options across a wide price range, from under $10 per pound to over $15. With grocery prices high across the board, finding a low-priced cut of salmon that also delivers quality isn't easy, so I picked up one of the lowest-costing options from each store to find out if you really do need to pay up for high-quality salmon, or if you can snag a bag at a reasonable price. Read on to find out which store offers the best frozen salmon and which should be kept on ice.

There's a fine line between a good value and something being cheap. At $7.65 per pound, Aldi's Freemont Fish Market Wild Caught Pink Salmon is the least expensive fish on the list, but unfortunately, it's also the lowest quality. My one pound bag of this skinless salmon contained five thin, unevenly shaped and individually wrapped filets. While salmon is known for it's bright pink coloring, the hue of these pieces is washed out at best. 

Different types of salmon come in varying shades of reds, pinks, and oranges depending on breed and feeding practices, so color isn't a definitive marker of the meat's quality. Still, it's hard to entirely discount appearance and Freemont's is by far the least appealing on the list.

The taste and texture did little to overshadow the uninspiring hue. With a flavor that was more fishy than most of the others, the thin, slightly dry meat just frankly tasted uninspiring. Even the garlic honey-mustard sauce couldn't give this salmon much in the way of personality. Is Aldi's frozen salmon bad? No, but it's also not particularly good, making it a frozen option best avoided.

Trader Joe's is best known for its extensive selection of fun snacks and frozen items, but frozen fish is not among the notable. I purchased the Wild Silver Coho Salmon, which came in a single, vacuum-sealed package containing two long filets. At $13.99 per pound, Trader Joe's is the most expensive selection on the list, but it simply doesn't do enough to live up to that price point.

On the positive side, the filets are a decent size. If you're preparing a meal for two, this is a perfectly reasonable portion. The slices are fairly even and relatively flat, which makes cooking a breeze. From an appearance standpoint, a bright pink color makes this salmon especially appealing, but there's not much to back up the looks. The fish flakes apart well enough and is tender, but was once again on the dryer side. (Yes, some of the dryness could be attributed to cooking temperature, but I aimed for 140 degree Fahrenheit internal temperature on all of the cuts.) In the end, Trader Joe's frozen salmon simply doesn't deliver enough value to be worth purchasing.

One unique aspect of buying different brands of frozen salmon is the varying quantities of slices you'll get per package. Trader Joe's only had two in a portion that was just over half a pound, while Freemont Fish Market fit five filets into a one pound bag. Kroger, purchased from Metro Market, divies a two-pound bag into seven slices. If you're cooking for a family, more individual cuts can be helpful and a $8.50 per pound, Kroger slots in as the second best value on the list.

Visually, Kroger's salmon is more similar to the Freemont fish than any others. The filets are on the thinner side, though across the package they remain consistent in size. The flavor is simply better, though. I found each bite was tender, which a good flake and far less of the general fishy taste than the Aldi brand. With quality taste and texture, it's easy to overlook a middling appearance. Toss in a great price point and Kroger is definitely worth a look if you're on the hunt for frozen salmon.

Target's Good and Gather Farmed Atlantic Salmon is the first entry on the list to be farm-raised rather than wild-caught. While wild-caught salmon is generally recognized for its higher health benefits, farm-raised salmon tends to be fattier, which makes it better for higher-heat cooking methods, like grilling. Also unique to Good and Gather is that this is a skin-on filet, bucking the trend of all skinless so far.

Visually, this is one of the better looking fish I tasted. The individually packed filets are narrow, but thick and the skin along one side is lovely for presentation purposes. While the flavor is on the milder side, the flake of the meat is thick and each bite was extremely moist. The one pound bag only had four slices, but each was sufficient for a single serving. At $11.99 per pound, Good and Gather sits right in the center of the price index, making it a quality fish for a solid value.

The title of this slide might seem a bit extreme, but Marketside wants it known that this farm-raised fish is antibiotic free just as much as it wants you to now that it's Coho salmon. While the other farm-raised options proudly boast the same, Walmart put the info in the title. With a pricepoint of $9.86 for a one pound bag, Marketside is nearly twice as pricy as the store's other brand, Great Value Frozen Wild Caught Pink Salmon which clocks in at $5.38 per pound. Thankfully, this fish is well worth the added cost.

Another skin-on filet, Marketside offers easily the deepest pink color — likely the result of dyes in the salmon's food, but still visually appealing. Each of the three individually wrapped pieces in the bag are hearty tail and shank cuts, meaning they have long, narrow shape that starts out thick on one end and tapers down to the other. 

This shape is common for salmon and while it does mean that two ends of the fish cook at different rates, it allows for a thick, meaty bite on one side and a crispier bite on the other. Marketside brings a nice salmon flavor along with good moisture and a thick flake to each slice. I've had this fish numerous times and it's never disappointed, though the low number of filets per bag could be tough if you're cooking for more than a few folks at a time.

Costco is best known for two things: large quantities and value. Kirkland Signature Farm Raised Atlantic Salmon is no different, with a three-pound bag priced at $33.99, or $11.33 per pound. Another farm-raised fish, this salmon is skinless and individually packed with seven large second-cut filets in the bag I purchased. Remember, there were seven pieces in Kroger's two pound bag, so these are some very large slabs of salmon. They took the longest of any on the list to cook, but a little extra time over the stove was definitely a worthy investment.

In addition to being large and meaty, Kirkland's salmon has an even, classic pink color. I found the piece flaked apart in thick pieces and remained extremely juicy. There's definitely a benefit to a thicker piece of salmon as they're more forgiving when it comes to cooking time and temperature. If you're a regular salmon consumer, it's hard to be the combined quality and value that Costco has to offer.

I stopped by six different stores and checked out their salmon selection. From each, I purchased the least expensive option except at Walmart, where I grabbed the cheapest of the store's Marketside brand. I've written about frozen fish once in the past, and in that review, I tried Walmart's Great Value brand salmon. It wasn't good. Going into a review knowing one of the selections is unappetizing isn't a great way to start, so instead I opted for the lowest price salmon from Walmart's higher-end brand, Marketside.

Once the filets were thawed, I prepared each one the same way, according to this awesome honey-mustard salmon recipe, and pan-fried them. After snapping a few pictures, I tasted each, evaluating based on taste, texture, and overall quality. I also took price point and value into consideration in the ranking. Price certainly plays a part, but I found that the size and shape of each filet was just as if not more important.