I Eat Canned Sardines Every Week. These Are 6 Easy Ways I Prep Them at Home

I’ve loved canned sardines before they were cool—back before they started appearing on Staud purses and dresses or as handles on Bottega Veneta totes. Whenever I heard over the past few summers that it was a “sardine girl summer,” I’d think of the late-night dinners my mom sometimes made for us. Since both my parents worked—and my mom often taught at the university in the evenings—some weeknight dinners needed to be as simple as a bowl of labneh with copious amounts of deliciously bitter olive oil, a couple of smashed hard-boiled eggs with salt, pepper, and more olive oil, and a can of sardines drenched in freshly squeezed lemon, swimming in—you guessed it—even more olive oil. She topped the sardines with chopped green chiles, and we scooped them all up with torn pieces of warm pita. My mom often made this dinner when it was just the two of us at home—my brother and sister might be out, my dad might be traveling for work. For me, this will always be the OG girl dinner.

Flash forward to today, and I’m just as in love with these tightly packed preserved fish as ever. To me, sardines aren’t just a trend—they’re as much about humble, comforting family dinners as they are about cool tins and their newfound status as a fashion-world accessory. On a recent trip to Spain and Portugal, I bought so many tins that I had to pick up a mini carry-on just to haul them back to New York. Whether they came from tiny, hard-to-find conserva shops or cavernous stores with walls stacked floor to ceiling with tinned seafood, I impulse-bought as many as I could manage. It was, without a doubt, a worthwhile endeavor.

How Sardines Became Cool

Tinned fish didn’t just stumble into trendiness—it underwent a full transformation. The art of sardine packaging has deep roots: Portuguese, Spanish, and French tins have long served as miniature canvases, decorated with retro women, arabesque tile motifs, and brilliantly painted fish. As sardine canneries expanded in France, Portugal, and Spain in the mid-to-late 19th century, producers began using lithographed labels to stand out. The practice of preserving fish in tins actually began even earlier, when French confectioner Nicolas Appert discovered in 1809 that sealing food in heated containers kept it edible for soldiers on long campaigns, according to a 2022 article in Atlas Obscura.

What changed is that the rest of the world finally caught on. In December 2020, Becca Millstein and Caroline Goldfarb launched Fishwife, a US-based brand born of the pandemic-era turn toward pantry staples, reimagining the humble tin as something to get excited about. Their tins weren’t just filled with premium seafood—they came wrapped in such bold, playful, and artfully designed packaging that they looked like boutique perfume boxes and indie ‘zines—vibrant, cheeky, a little retro, and utterly collectible. Fishwife quickly became the face of the new wave of conserva culture in the US.

Enter the TikTok era of sardines. In 2022, San Francisco chef Ali Hooke began posting her weekly “tinned-fish date nights” with her husband, sparking a flood of copycat videos and cementing the sardine as the internet’s most unlikely romantic lead. Across the Atlantic, Marcus Ansell—better known to his 615,000 TikTok followers as Tinned Fish Reviews—pushed the trend even further. The sardine influencer (words my teenage self never thought I’d type) from Newark, Nottinghamshire, has reviewed more than a thousand cans from around the world, delivering takes that are equal parts informative and delightfully eccentric. Sometimes he inexplicably dons a fez (occasionally his dog joins in the sartorial statement), adding to the offbeat charm of his channel.

Together, TikTok creators and bold new brands helped transform sardines from an old-fashioned pantry staple into a cultural moment. Your grandpa’s favorite snack has become the ultimate it-girl food—with dizzying varieties wrapped in cool, artsy, colorful packaging that feels more like a limited-edition print than pantry stock. But once you’ve amassed your haul of tinned fish, what do you do with it all beyond the classic crackers-and-lemon routine?

How to Use Sardines Beyond the Can

While sardines straight from the tin with a baguette or crackers and a squeeze of lemon will always have their place, they shine in modern cooking too—often in ways you might not expect. Here are some of my favorite ways to use them:

• Toss them into pasta with olive oil, garlic, lemon, capers, Parmesan, and a little butter. The lemon balances out the sardines’ rich, pungent flavor.
• Swap canned sardines for fresh in pasta dishes such as pasta con le sarde. While our editorial director, Daniel, prefers the Sicilian dish prepared with fresh fillets (the way it was intended), canned sardines work well in a pinch—as many readers in the recipe’s comment section have attested. Pasta al tonno, made with tuna as the name suggests, is also quick, easy, and excellent when made with sardines instead.
• Build a rice bowl with pickled red onions, avocado, kimchi, crumbled sheets of nori, and a fried egg cooked in sesame oil. A drizzle of soy sauce ties it all together.
• Make a sandwich with a crusty baguette, punchy garlic aioli, roasted red peppers, and pickled shallots layered with sardines. The vinegar from the shallots cuts through the fattiness of the fish and brightens every bite.
• Instantly elevate any charcuterie board: Sardines might not be the first thing you think to set out with your cheeses and cured meats, but their salty richness makes them right at home. Serve them in their pretty tins or fan them out on a small plate with pickled vegetables, olives, and a swipe of good butter. Their richness compliments cheeses like Brie or Camembert and their subtly briny flavor balances salty cured meats.
• Toss them into a salad of bitter lettuces such as radicchio or castelfranco, dressed generously with zingy lemon dressing. Add chopped pistachios or almonds and toasted garlicky breadcrumbs for crunch.

All it takes is one tin to turn an ordinary meal into something deeply satisfying. Once you start cooking with tinned sardines, you’ll never look at them as a pantry back-up again. With these exciting ways to use them, my carefully hoarded pile of decorative tins always dwindles faster than I expect—and really, what’s the point of lugging suitcases of tinned fish across continents if I’m not going to enjoy them to the fullest?