Asian carp

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Dodge Man

Dodge Man

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Dyersburg, TN
Has anybody here tried eating them? The whole reason we have them here in the US any way is because they eat a lot of them over in Asia and they brought them here to feed to people. I don't know why people here don't eat them?
 
http://www.illinoisbowfishing.net/Recipes.html

Recipes

Carp Cakes

1 small buffalo or carp, prepared for cooking
3 eggs
1/4 cup chopped onions
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon milk cracker meal
1/4 cup vegetable shortening

Bake the fish in a preheated 350-degree oven until fish flakes easily from the bones. Remove the meat from the bones, allow to cool, then crumble in a bowl. In a blender, mix onion, green pepper, garlic salt, salt, and pepper, and liquefy. Add the liquid to the crumbled fish. Shape into patties. Dip each patty in the egg/milk mixture, then dredge in cracker meal. Fry in shortening heated in a skillet. Brown both sides.
 
http://www.lib.niu.edu/2002/oi020509.html

Commercial anglers are having a tough time marketing this abundant nuisance species which ranks better than tuna in taste tests.

STORY AND RECIPES
BY P.J. PEREA
PHOTOS BY ADELE HODDE

"The biggest problem right now with bighead and silver carp are the bones," said Rob Maher, head of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources commercial fishing program. "The commercial anglers don't have any machinery that can handle the larger-sized fish and the numerous bones that are interlaced throughout their meat."

The bighead and silver carp are filter feeders, and the bones are part of a fine sensory network that allows the fish to detect minute food particles in the water column.

With the help of Mike Hooe of the Division of Fisheries, Maher spent a morning collecting fish for recipe testing. It did not take long to find a school of bigheads, as several breached around the wake of their boat.

"After a five-minute net set, we had more than 150 pounds of bighead and silver carp in the net," Maher said. "There are literally tons of these fish out there."

A recent marketing test performed at the University of Arkansas on canned bighead carp revealed that taste testers preferred the flavor of canned bighead carp to that of canned tuna.

The flesh of a fresh bighead and silver carp is firm, clean and slightly translucent with a metallic sheen. There is an oily feel to the firm meat, much like that of a whitefish or a freshwater trout. The meat is very mild when cooked and will readily absorb spices and marinades. Every fish used in the recipe testing was very healthy and had a sizeable fat layer on the belly and inside its back. The fat is slightly bitter and should be removed prior to cooking.

Here are three recipes that allow cooks to deal with the bones, whether from a smaller fish of 1 to 5 pounds or from a larger 5- to 30-pound fish.
 
I have wondered, and if they ever make their way up into the Harpeth river system, I will become an expert bowfisherman.

I think the reason they brought them here was not for food, but for aquatic vegetation control. There were some stocked in some ponds (maybe catfish ponds? I don't remember) near the Mississippi, when the big muddy flooded and the carp escaped from the pond. Obviously after that point, all hell broke loose and the carp invaded everything.

I would eat carp, buffalo, etc, if I can find a good way to pulverize or remove bones without too much labor. The taste needs to be worth the labor for me otherwise I won't bother. Food processor and mixed with fritter batter is a possibility.

Grass carp are also asian but don't seem to be much of a problem at all. Plus they are fun as heck to catch with a piece of white bread in the pond down the road....
 
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Two species of Asian carp -- the bighead and silver -- were imported by catfish farmers in the 1970's to remove algae and suspended matter out of their ponds. During large floods in the early 1990s, many of the catfish farm ponds overflowed their banks, and the Asian carp were released into local waterways in the Mississippi River basin.


Ok I was wrong about them being brought in for food but I do know they eat a lot of them in Asia but I don't know anybody here that has tried them.
 
Fortunately, bighead and silver carp have a redeeming value: Their meat is absolutely delicious. I have eaten them pan-fried, deep-fried, grilled, baked, steamed, smoked, in curries, in soup and even pickled. They are delicious when prepared in any of those ways.

Don't believe all carp taste the same. There is no comparison between the firm, white, flaky meat of bighead and silver carp and the darker, strong-tasting meat of common carp. Silver carp also happen to be a bettersource of Omega-3 fatty acids (the "good chloresterol") than salmon.

http://mdc.mo.gov/conmag/2004/07/carp-lemonade
 
Cleaning Asian carp
Remove the fillets from the body of the carp (1) as you would any other fish. Cut around the ribs, leaving them attached to the skeleton.

Lay the fillets skin side down on a cutting board and cut them in half lengthwise, cutting through the skin (2). Remove any fatty belly meat from the fillet. It has a strong flavor.

Skin the fillet halves by laying them skin side down on the cutting board and slicing the meat from the skin, starting at the tail section (3). An electric knife works especially well for this, but any sharp knife will do.

Remove and discard the dark red meat from the fillet halves (4).You now have delicious white meat, but there are still Y-shaped intramuscular bones hiding inside.

Cut the rib cage section off. It is now boneless so you can use it without further preparation.

The Y-bones (5) lie lengthwise at an angle through the fillets. Slip the fillet knife in between the bones and cut strips that contain two or three bones, taking care to not cut any bones. It won't take long to understand exactly where the boneslie.

Now roll these fillets in cornmeal or your favorite breading and fry them as you would any fish. At the table, break the strip in half. The bones will stay in one half.You can eat the boneless half of the strip, then grab the Y-bones and pull them from the other half and eat it, too. It's a lot like eating hot wings, but not as messy.
 
Deboning

If your family insists on fish with no bones at all, with a little more work you can remove all the bones from a fillet.The shape of the meat that results is different from what most people are familiar with, but the taste is excellent.You should start with a fish of at least 8 pounds, at least until you are familiar with the technique.

Start with the top half of a fillet. Lay the fillet on your cutting board so that the outside of the fish is up.With your fingers, feel for a hard portion on the first inch of the filet.There are a couple of unusual pine cone-shaped bones in the first inch or so of the top half of the fillet.These make bone removal from that section impossible. Starting behind this hard section, holding your knife parallel to the cutting board, cut a long strip of meat from the top of the fillet, exposing the Y-bones (6).This will result in a boneless piece of meat about as thick as a crappie filet, but about two inches wide and very long.

Using shallow cuts, free the meat from above and below the exposed Y-bones (7).

Turn the fillet over.You will see a row of white dots that indicate where the point of the Y-branch of the bone nears the cut surface of the fillet.Make a cut parallel to and right above the row of dots (8). Cut down until the knife contacts the main shaft of the Y-bone.Cut and scrape sideways with the knife to remove a long, rope-like piece of boneless meat.

Repeat step 3,making your cut just below the row of dots (9) and removing the remainder of the usable meat from the top half of the fillet.

Now de-bone the bottom half of a filet (10).You have already de-boned the meat from the rib cage section when you left the ribs attached to the skeleton. Cut the ribcage section off and put it with your boneless meat. Now repeat steps 3 and 4 with the remaining portion of the bottom fillet. The bones lie very near the surface of the meat on the bottom half of the fillet, so there is no need to repeat steps 1 and 2.

Repeat above with the other side of the fish. Once you become proficient, it takes about 20 minutes to completely de-bone an Asian carp. That may seem like a lot of work,but if you can generate 3 pounds of bluegill fillets in a similar time, you are faster with a fillet knife than Zorro is with his sword.
 
My thinking is if these fish are as good as some of these web sites make them out to be then it would take no time to fill a freezer with good tasting fish, or have enough for a fish fry or 10 just by driving down a river full of them. I have thrown a lot of them out of my boat and always thought I would try eating them some day but just never have.

I really want to try them now that I have looked at how to clean them and seen how to cook them.
 
Sure they are cleaner than catfish, they eat aquatic weeds as opposed to just about everything a catfish can fit in its mouth.
 
Gotta say, Americans won't eat them because they're/we're spoiled, and can't be bothered to pick bones out of our food. Heck, we sell boneless chicken wings, and how hard are THOSE bones to pick out??

I heard a man explain once that carp were God's gift to the hungry. They will be the last fish still thriving in even the worst of water conditions, and any contaminants they consume end up concentrated in the mudline that you can easily trim out.

But since Americans aren't lacking for food, they will never be considered a food-for-humans fish until someone can process them beyond recognition and rename them something akin to "Tiger Perch" or "Silver Turbot".
 
Please show me the white meat? lol I tried to eat one. And I would try again but they are not good baked.

buffalo1.jpg
 
I have eaten both buffalo and common carp fried only and I love them as much if not more than most other fish. I will take buffalo over catfish any day!
 
catman529 said:
trealtree are you sure those aren't buffalo? they don't look so much like asian carp to me.
Click to expand...

I never said they were not buffalo. I just want to know what part is edible.. ;) I may try frying them next time as dodge man suggested.
 
Looks like you cut it up ok. Just cut it into strips maybe 2 or 3 inches wide and fry them. There will be some small bones in it so eat slow but it is really good.
 
if I can find out how to cut out the bones, if it's similar to the Y bones in a trout, I may give it a try. Strips of boneless buffalo might be worth frying... after all, if you fry it, I'll try it. ;)

The only buffalo I caught were snagged and I will probably do it again this year. Later in the summer, they float just inches below the surface facing upstream and will do nothing to your bait, they completely ignore it. So when you bring out a big treble hook then it gets really fun.
 

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