What Are Fish Sticks Made Of, Anyway?

There's something about eating a food in stick form that makes it feel like so much more of a treat. Mozzarella sticks, soft pretzel sticks, and even fish sticks, which are those pre-fried, frozen seafood sticks that have all the flavors of your favorite fish, all offer nostalgic deliciousness. Despite their treasured reputation, not a lot of people have ever really questioned what's in those fish sticks. Frozen fish sticks first made their debut back in 1953, and ever since, they've been a seafood-aisle freezer staple. Some brands make them with a plain whitefish, such as Alaskan pollock, while others make them with a blend of minced, mild-tasting fish varieties, such as haddock and sole in addition to pollock.

Fish sticks were the direct result of the post-World War II era, where better refrigeration made it much easier for boats to catch fish and bring it home without spoilage. Left with more fish than demand, they needed a solution to use the fish. US-based food company General Foods Corp, which owned Birds Eye, applied for a patent for fish sticks in the 1952, which partially describes their creation process as mixing and freezing numerous fish pieces into a larger, homogeneous unit, before being cut into smaller batons. Then, the sticks were coated with breading before being fried, packaged, and sold. Believe it or not, most manufacturers still follow this original patent formula today.

The minced fish or pollock is coated with batter or breading before it's partially cooked and frozen, and the purpose of this step years ago was to make fish as appealing as chicken. The thought was that the chicken-tender style appearance would have more people willing to try them. Today, different seafood companies have a slightly different recipe for the breading mixture; Gorton's uses wheat flour and yellow corn flour, plus seasonings. Trident Seafoods uses a blend of whole wheat flour, enriched flour, and whole grain yellow corn meal, in addition to a blend of dried seasonings. Trident also adds some unexpected ranch seasoning to its breading mixture.

The formula for the perfect fish stick has changed through the years. Today, Gorton's fish sticks, for example, contain added sugars and soybean oil, as well as additional flavoring, all of which didn't exist in earlier versions of the snack. Still, this stick-shaped snack has stood the test of time.