CarneAtlas

Ricciola

Fish · Carangidae

Ricciola in English is Greater amberjack. It belongs to the Carangidae family; the names below show how the same fish is sold across international markets.

Ricciola — Carangidae fish

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Also called
🇺🇸🇬🇧Greater amberjack🇫🇷Sériole couronnée🇪🇸Pez limón🇵🇹Charuteiro🇩🇪Bernsteinmakrele

Ricciola is the greater amberjack — a fast, powerful Carangidae of the Mediterranean and warm Atlantic, and one of the few large fish that is genuinely excellent both raw and cooked. Italian kitchens treat it as a premium fish for carpaccio and crudo; Spanish ones, where it is pez limón, grill it in thick steaks or cure it. The flesh is pale, dense and clean-tasting with a high fat content along the belly, which is why the closely related Japanese species is the hamachi of sushi counters. Size matters more than with most fish: small specimens are mild and forgiving, while very large ones can carry parasites and are usually frozen before serving raw. It is farmed increasingly in Spain and Italy. Distinguish it from the various fish called jurel, which are its much smaller relatives in the same family.

Names by country

CountryNameNotes
🇺🇸United StatesGreater amberjackThe closely related Japanese species is the hamachi of sushi counters
🇬🇧United KingdomGreater amberjack
🇫🇷FranceSériole couronnée
🇪🇸SpainPez limónAlso serviola; farmed along the Spanish Mediterranean coast
🇵🇹PortugalCharuteiro
🇮🇹ItalyRicciolaprimaryA premium crudo and carpaccio fish in Italy
🇩🇪GermanyBernsteinmakrele

Culinary substitutes

Tuna
Tuna

Both are dense, clean-tasting fish eaten raw as well as seared — amberjack is paler and leaner with a firmer bite, tuna darker and richer.

Pompano
Pompano

Both are Carangidae with rich white flesh, but at opposite scales — pompano is a small whole-cooking fish, amberjack a large one cut into steaks and loins.

Often confused with

Ricciola vs Greater amberjacksame fishRicciola vs TunaRicciola vs Pompano

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