This is a little story about some scallops I made this week.

All ingredients were from Trader Joe’s unless specified otherwise: Wild Japanese scallops ($9.99 per bag), Giant New England scallops ($10.99 per bag), unsalted butter, Olive Oil in a spray can, and Lawry’s seasoning salt.

The scallops were frozen to start with. To defrost, I left them on the counter sandwiched between paper towels and pressed under a cooling rack with a half-empty wine bottle on top, for about 3 hours, with the wine bottle getting progressively lighter. Never-been-frozen scallops would have been better, of course, but the giant bay scallops at the two local fish counters are between $18.95 and $24.99 per pound, which is a bit rich for me at the moment. Especially for an experiment.

(In the images below, the Japanese scallops are always on the left, the New England on the right.)

My final conclusion was that the Japanese scallops had chewier texture and slightly sweeter taste in all cooking methods, but had a tendency to fall apart or flatten, and carmelized very quickly. The New England scallops were a close second in taste, but consistently meatier, held their shape very well, developed a nice golden color, and would work well for dishes where the savory element was dominant.

On a related note, I prefer large scallops to smaller ones because my dad told me once when we were kids, eating plain microwaved scallops for breakfast, that sometimes supermarkets substitute cow ankle tendons for scallops because the appearance and texture are nearly identical, the taste is very similar, and the price is significantly lower. However, if there is sand or grit in your scallop, you know you’ve got the real thing. Rather than worry if I am eating undercover bovine tendon, I just buy the jumbo scallops and enjoy the mental image of a pack of black-market fish-mongers, wielding giant harpoons, chasing down a 5-ton cow with ankles the size of small tree trunks.