Great Value Breaded Fish Sticks Review

We baked a box of these Great Value Breaded Fish Sticks tonight for supper. With their modest yet flavorful golden flour coating (the breading), this fish product made a fine main course. It baked up in under 20 minutes, had a reasonable cost, and really filled us up. It’s a satisfying seafood, for sure.

Benefits, Pros, Advantages, and Features

You get 44 fish sticks per 24.7-ounce box.
Texas Pete hot sauce adds something special to this fish, which the bread coating readily drinks in..
4 or 5 sticks makes a great sandwich for standard-sized bread slices.
Mild fish flavor, that is dominated by the spicy breading.
The box features tabs for re closing. Apparently, they didn’t plan on people consuming the entire box in one meal. A good thing, actually.
Except for the breading, you get 100% minced pollock fish here, with the featured Omega-3 fatty acids that occur naturally in seafood..
The included backing instructions work pretty well, although I had to bake these fish sticks for a few minutes longer than recommended at the recommended temperature, to get the level of crispness I look for in my breaded fish.
Pleasant aroma during baking.
No mono-sodium glutamate or trans fat.
No bleached flour here either. So enriching is unnecessary, and is not done here.
Ketchup, Buffalo wing sauce, or hot sauce are great condiments for this product.
The best-if-used-by date is approximately ten months into the future. So you can stock your freezer with this product without worries that it will go bad in the next year.
Product is easy to locate if you have a Walmart grocery store near you.

Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns

Keep a close eye on these fish sticks while baking, as they’ll burn quickly if allowed to remain in the oven for too much longer than the recommended time.
No inner plastic bag is included. So though the box itself is re closeable, don’t keep this fish in the freezer for too long, lest it absorb other odors and flavors in the freezer, or become freezer burned.
Microwave oven heating is not advised.
The ratio of bread coating to fish is rather high. With little mass, these fish sticks cool off within two or three minutes of removing them from the oven. So I’d recommend that you eat them as quickly as you can, once baking is complete.
There’s some added sugar and preservatives herein. So these fish sticks definitely qualify as a processed, non-whole food.

Cooking Directions

Position one of your conventional oven racks in the middle set of holders in the oven.
Start your oven heating to 425 degrees F.
While you wait for the requested temperature to be reached, line a shallow baking pan with aluminum foil, in case of sticking. Easier cleanup if that happens, if all you have to do is throw out the used foil.
For added anti-stick action, lightly spray the exposed surface of the foil with canola oil cooking spray or some other high-temperature-handling-capacity non stick spray.
Place the desired number of Great Value fish sticks in this foil-lined baking pan.
Then, once the oven reaches 425 degrees, place uncovered pan in oven, on middle rack.
Bake for 17 to 19 minutes, or until crunchy and browned.
Roll fish sticks over after 10 minutes. I had too many sticks in my shallow pan to bother flipping. So I just left them in the oven for the entire baking time, without turning over. Nothing bad happened. Indeed, I still got a pretty uniform crunch on both sides of these sticks.
Anyway, once baking is complete, remove the fish sticks from oven. Be warned that fish is not completely cooked until its internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F or higher. But you’ll easily get this, if your oven is indeed operating at 425 degrees. Verify, if desired, with an oven thermometer.
Turn off the oven.
Eat fish quickly, as it will cool quickly given each fish stick’s low overall mass.

Do not re freeze raw fish or prepare in a toaster oven or microwave, Promptly refrigerate any uneaten, cooked fish. Discard any raw fish that’s been raw for more than a few hours.

Ingredients List

Minced Alaska Pollock fish, enriched wheat flour (flour, niacin, ferrous sulphate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, vegetable oil (soybean, canola, and / or cottonseed oil), yellow corn flour. Contains less than 2% of the following: cornstarch, salt, leavening (sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium bicarbonate), onion powder, modified cellulose, yeast, sugar, caramel color, extractives of paprika, anatto, turmeric (color).

Allergy warning: Contains pollock, wheat, and soy. May contain traces of milk, eggs, crab, shrimp, almonds, coconut, macadamia nuts, pine nuts, and walnuts.

Nutrition Facts

Serving size: 5 fish sticks (79 grams). Servings per container: about 9.
Calories: 180. Calories from fat: 80.
Total fat: 8 grams, 12% DV.
Saturated fat: 1.5 grams, 8% DV.
Trans fat: 0 grams.
Polyunsaturated fat: 5 grams.
Monounsaturated fat: 2 grams.
Cholesterol: 30 milligrams, 10% DV.
Sodium: 220 milligrams, 9% DV.
Potassium: 150 milligrams, 4% DV.
Total carbohydrate: 17 grams, 6% DV.
Dietary Fiber: 1 grams, 4% DV.
Sugars: 0 grams.
Protein: 9 grams.
Vitamin A: 0% DV.
Calcium: 0% DV.
Folic Acid: 0% DV.
Vitamin C: 0% DV.
Iron: 6% DV.

Product Rating

Though this is a store brand (as opposed to a name brand) fish stick product, and though it’s significantly cheaper than the name brands, I found no cheaper taste or overall quality here. This product tastes every bit as good as the Mrs. Paul’s and Gorton’s name brand offerings. Thus, I’d rate this Great Value product at 94 out of 100.

Where To Buy Great Value Breaded Fish Sticks

Look for the white box with a picture of the sticks alongside a cup of cocktail sauce on the front and the blue and white Great Value logo exclusively at Walmart grocery stores and super centers.

References

Revision History

2015-02-07: Moved this post to the Tom’s Diet Quest blog, added whitespace, adjusted ad placement, and tweaked the content.
2012-09-22 Originally published.