13 Easy Ways to Lower Your Grocery Bill When Buying Seafood

Seafood can be a delicious and nutritious addition to your dinner. Fish is high in essential omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, and riboflavin. It’s also a great source of minerals like calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, and potassium.

However, these health benefits often come at a hefty price, which makes it harder to stay within (or under) your grocery budget. Luckily, there are ways to enjoy quality fish and shellfish without going over your budget.

Here are some of our favorite grocery budget hacks so you can save money while still savoring the best the ocean has to offer.

The “fresh” fish at the seafood counter has likely already been frozen and thawed, shortening its shelf life in your fridge.

Prevent your fish from going bad before you can use it by buying it frozen. Bags of frozen seafood are often cheaper than the “fresh” varieties behind the counter.

On the scale of pricey to cheap seafood options, many shellfish, like mussels, tend to be on the more frugal end. When looking for inexpensive seafood options, check out shrimp, scallops, and mussels.

If your recipe can tolerate the canned version, tuna, salmon, sardines, tiny shrimp, and clams are often less expensive than other forms of seafood. Moreover, they can keep them on the shelf for months or years — no fridge or freezer is necessary.

Certain species of fish may be less expensive when they’re in season.

For instance, Alaskan salmon runs in the early summer and tends to be cheaper at that time. If there’s a shortage of a particular type of seafood, see if there’s an alternative variety that costs less.

Whether you opt for unpeeled shrimp or salmon with the skin on, the less processed the fish is the cheaper it tends to be. You may even be able to find whole fish, depending on your supermarket.

There’s no need to serve large fillets of cod or salmon steaks. By opting for smaller portions of fish, you can stretch your seafood dollars further.

If a few picky eaters in your house didn’t eat the shrimp or cod you cooked last night, you could repurpose them into a fish stew or shrimp tacos. Don’t let those omega-3s go to waste.

While we often think of a slab of grilled or fried fish as the entree, there are plenty of ways to make seafood an accent rather than the star of the show.

Mixing shrimp or clams into pasta or soups, for instance, is a great way to add more seafood to your diet without breaking the bank.

Big, beautiful fillets get all the love, but the extra bits — even shells and bones — can be used. To minimize waste and maximize your seafood dollars, use the extra bits to make fish stock for future meals.

As an alternative to store-bought seafood, you can get yourself a license and catch fish yourself.

While this can be a cost-effective and fun option, know that you’ll have to cover the initial cost of a license, fishing pole, and tackle. Be sure to understand and abide by local wildlife laws while fishing.

If you’re willing to go beyond the types of seafood you’re familiar with, you may score a good deal.

It just takes a quick internet search on your phone to figure out what type of fish you’re looking at (whether it’s firm or flaky, how strongly it tastes, etc.) and how to prepare it.

If you’re lucky enough to have a local fish market, you can cut out the middleman (the grocery store) by shopping there, and you may get a better deal.

You’ll also get the freshest seafood around. 

Pro tip: go when the market is about to close, and the fishmonger may be willing to give you a discount so they don’t have to take the fish home.

If you’re planning to chop up the fish for the recipe anyway, ask the fishmonger for scraps or trimmings. These will be cheaper and they’re good to make a variety of dishes, including lox, soup, toppings for macaroni and cheese, salmon cakes, and fish tacos.

Saving money on seafood doesn’t mean sacrificing taste or quality. With these smart shopping hacks, a variety of delicious, nutritious seafood dishes can earn a place in your meal plan and grocery budget.

Yes, you can have a large salmon or cod fillet, but those are fairly pricey ways to weave seafood into your diet. Making seafood affordable is really about getting creative and experimenting with alternatives to the mainstream seafood dishes you’re used to.

So next time you’re craving seafood, keep these tips in mind to make the most of your seafood purchases without the high price tag.