Dining on carp?

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Bert2368

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On the lake I grew up next to, there was a commercial carp fishery back around the 1930s through the late 1960s. Initially, the carp were seined from the lake and shipped LIVE in aerated tank cars to Chicago and other cities with European imigrant ethnic communities who considered fresh carp to be an edible, even choice fish.

As the first generation imigrants died off, the second and third generation were aculturated to the general USA view that carp is a bottom feeding icky fish which is not good to eat (too bad, there are litterally TONS of it available pretty much everywhere there is fresh water in USA).

The carp fishing equipment at the fishing facility down the road continued to be used after the big city fresh carp market disappeared- But the carp were now put through a hammer mill (shredder) along with all the wood county line clearing crews cut away from around the power and telephone lines. The mixture of shredded whole fish and wood chips was sold by the dump truck load to the local farmers, largely for use on tobacco fields.

An old timer who I worked tobacco with as a kid told me two things about this fertilizing practice: 1: If you spread it on the field in late fall, you could have amazingly good raccoon hunting in that field for several weeks... 2: One application was good for at least two years before you needed to fertilize again (it was a very slow release ferilizer).

Meet my niece:

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(A nice kid, majored in Japanese language, was hired by a Japanese prefectures tourism promotion organization to do liaison with US tourists right out of college, spent a year in Japan- Which unfortunately coincided with the earthquake, tidal wave and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima. She came home after her work contract expired)

She is about to make CURRY from this fish. Apparently, she did nibble on a bit of it raw, has sampled carp "caviar" too...

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...mention&notif_id=1591471920519614&ref=m_notif
So. We're pretty international here, what do YOU think about cooking with carp? Any good recipe suggestions?

I have eaten poached carp at restaurants in China and seen many aquaculture ponds in Szechuan province carp are grown in. The poached carp soup was as tasty as the cook was good. It did not bear thinking too much about the water quality of those ponds while eating, I could see that everything in the valley drained into them, including the areas they washed chemicals from equipment at the fireworks factories I was visiting.

In the midwest, there is a bit of a (German sourced?) tradition in smoking carp to be eaten as finger food while drinking beer. It is usual to use only carp taken in the winter, snagged through the ice with big hooks tied to the end of long handlesfor this, some claimed that Summer carp doesn't taste good. Personally, I suspect farm hands also didn't used to have any spare time during the summer to snag carp-
 
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In the midwest, there is a bit of a (German sourced?) tradition in smoking carp to be eaten as finger food while drinking beer. It is usual to use only carp taken in the winter, snagged through the ice with big hooks tied to the end of long handlesfor this, some claimed that Summer carp doesn't taste good. Personally, I suspect farm hands also didn't used to have any spare time during the summer to snag carp-


Cool, I grew up in Milwaukee and have had smoked carp before! Thanks for the memories.
 
Locally main uses for carp are to have with hot congee - properly sliced with few bones throughout the meat.
Boiled in soups
The heads are a common hawker delicacy. Will add a recipe to illustrate.
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The best fish dish my stepdad ever cooked was a carp I caught. i brought it home in an ice chest full of white-bass. He went straight for the female carp. He made a tomato based sauce with the carp roe in it. Blew me away hiw goid ut was.

carp just needs better PR. Or the earth food supply to dwindle away.
 
End result below.
Eating fish heads is a very non mainstream America thing though nose to tail eating appeared to be catching on rapidly.
Still remember taking some global heads out with my distributor in Thailand.
The owners of the company are incredibly well off yet humble put together people (3digit million net worth kind of wealth)
At the dinner, in their favourite high end Thai restaurant... one of the global team couldn’t eat anything. She said she couldn’t eat prawns that were in their shell... and that fish as well as it still had its head and was looking at her... She looked like she was going to be sick.
Sometimes you have to be there to experience the cultural differences otherwise stories like this just seem mind blowingly unbelievable.
To be fair she was the only one. The rest of the team ate with gusto and were very complimentary.
Lunch the next day was McDonalds, and I have never seen anyone so happy to eat fast food.
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I think carp has the same reputation in Australia but I like the taste personally.
 
There used to be a bar on Lake Carlisle in southern Illinois than served fried carp sandwiches. Haven't been there since late '70's. They were great! Nice, thick filet breaded and deep fried. Not as "earthy" tasting as catfish, more like cod or haddock.
 
I don't think I've ever seen carp for sale in Australia. Where did you get yours?

You can catch it in most fresh water rivers in SE QLD and NSW. I've never seen it for sale either, but I grew up fishing with my grandfather and it was a pretty common meal.
 
We used yabbies or worms, we never specifically tried to catch carp so we didn't use any specialist bait. The upside with catching a carp is the size compared to most other fresh water fish in shallow water, the downside is the bones....
 
Winter carp is very good and the flesh is firm. We would catch them too when the ice went out, but come summer we never bothered as the flesh softened and sometimes had a flavor I can only describe as "muddy".
 
I've eaten plenty of it in Bavaria (fresh out of a live tank) and in various places in China. Maybe not my most favorite fish but it can certainly be good done right.
 
Carp is a delicacy, you just need to remove the lateral line & gray area around it, then the fish will taste fresh not muddy.

I remove the head, cut lines around to open the flesh, fry the whole fish without head. Go with either brown sauce flavor or sweet & sour style, yum!

It’s much better than cat fish, I don’t know how to get rid of the muddy taste from catfish.
 
Down here in Austin, they put a bunch of sterile Asian carp in Lake Austin to help control the water plants. They also protected the carp so you couldn't harvest them. Unfortunately, they put to many in, and they live 20+ yrs, so they stripped all of the vegetation within Lake Austin. Throw in a flood or two where they open up the spill ways, and they are 100% downstream. About a year ago (maybe 2) they lifted the restriction on harvesting them w/ zero limits to try to help control them. I've heard they are very good eating if you are able to work to cut a clean filet from their bones (many bones, many fine bones).

Second part, I was on Lake Travis, which is upstream, fishing for some channel catfish. A gentleman came up next to us and asked what we were fishing for. He said he wasn't there for catfish, but rather carp (buffalo carp, etc). That they were here the weekend prior and had caught a couple.

Ive heard they are amazing fighting fish, but I haven't caught one, and I think I'm probably to lazy to property filet and cook one, so they've never been on my menu. I wouldn't turn my nose up if someone else did it though.
 
It’s much better than cat fish, I don’t know how to get rid of the muddy taste from catfish.

I've wondered about this as I've catfish both very fresh and delicious, and also muddy and "dirty" tasting. Curious if it's mode of preparation, or where the fish is from.

A good piece of fried catfish with hushpuppies on the side is where it's at.
 
Yep, once mud veins are removed carp is pretty good, just too many small bones. Scaling it is also not as easy as other fish.
 
I've catfish both very fresh and delicious, and also muddy and "dirty" tasting. Curious if it's mode of preparation, or where the fish is from.

Farmed catfish shouldn't taste muddy.
Wild catfish should have some terroir.
 

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