Cooking Carp

[jednorris]

I have heard about people cooking and eating Carp (fish), but I can find no recipes, is that because it is not worth the effort?

[Beagle333]

I personally didn't get around to the cooking of them. I did skin a few one time but they looked a dark red color and smelled to high heaven. I gave them away. I don't know how they cooked them, but they sure do have a powerful smell when one is skinning them that overpowered my curiosity about eating them!

[wch]

The old PA dutch recipe for carp is to cook them on the grill atop a cedar plank and when they're finished you throw the fish away and eat the plank.
If you are serious about cooking them do a Google search for asian carp recipes, they eat carp often.

[country gent]

Have seen smoked carp. In some countries carp is a delicacy not just asian but european as well. We have ate them on occassion the trick is to keep them cold and when cleaning besure to get all the mud viens out. A overnight soak in salt water brine helps also. Not real good for smaller kids as alot of finer bones. I would imagine a long slow smoking with hickory or mestiuqe would be pretty good.

[richhodg66]

The red meat mentioned should be cut away. It's fairly thin just under the skin. A lot goes away when you skin the filets.

If you take them from a clear water source, they are good eating. They are very hardy fish and can suvive water conditions others can't, so people see them in stagnant, muddy water and think "no way would I eat one". Worldwide, lots of people eat them, the fish markets in Bahgdad all sold carp almost exclusively.

Worst thing about them is all the Y bones. No way to cut them out really and I never had much luck cooking them soft. Therefore, use recipes that get around that a little. They are excellent smoked, and it's easy to do just takes a while. Another way we ate a lot of them was to boil the filets til the meat gets soft, then pick the y bones out (easy to do at that point) mash the meat up with cracker crumbs, so egg and chopped onions, whatever, then form into patties and fry them. My kids liked those a lot.

Haven't done it much lately, but used to bowfish every day during the warm months. Left a lot of them to rot, but ate a lot of them too. I think Carp are under utilized as a food fish, on a good bowfishing day, I could stack up 100 pounds or more of carp meat in an hour or two pretty easily.

[Smoke4320]

Fixed right carp taste just fine.. Nothing to brag about but decent eating

Ingredients

1 whole Carp 1 cup bread stuffing 1 egg 1 cup bread crumbs 2 tablespoons butter 2 onions - chopped 1 bunch parsley 1 cup water 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1 lemon - sliced 1 tablespoon plain flour 1 tablespoon butter (extra) Salt and Pepper to taste

Method

Have the fish opened at the gills and the intestines drawn out through the opening. Wash the flesh with vinegar and let it stand for fifteen minutes. Fill the fish with a bread stuffing, and sew the head down firmly. Brush the fish all over with an egg, cover it thickly with bread crumbs and a few lumps of butter. Put 2 chopped onions and a bunch of parsley in the pan, and a cup of water mixed with 1 teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce. Bake for an hour in a moderate oven, basting occasionally. When the fish is done, place it on a heated platter and garnish with slices of lemon. Add enough water to the gravy in the pan to make a half pint. Thicken with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into 1 of butter. Cook for a moment, strain, add the juice of a lemon, and pepper and salt to taste. Serve in a gravy-boat.

[Reg]

I always turned my nose up with carp until a couple of years ago. Was doing a lot of canning and decided to take off fishing. Caught a couple of carp and decided, why not. Had heard that if canned you would change your opinion quickly. They came from clean fresh water and I kept them carefully cold until at home. Filleted them out and quickly canned them. All I can say it was the finest, most delicate flavored canned fish I had ever had. The bones were simply not there. Mixed with some crushed up crackers, egg white and some seasoning then baked or fried they are as good as anything you can get.
Will be bow fishing soon as things warm up and you can bet none will be just thrown up on the bank.
If you have never tried properly prepared carp you might want to remain a little more open minded.

PS

Much and I do mean much better than the "slimmers", put and take trout that so many make so much over !!

[theperfessor]

We ate them when I was a kid. Fillet them from side to side and then cut out the mud vein down the center of each filet. This leaves four strips of clean white meat that can be breaded and pan/deep fried, boiled/canned, or cooked any other way.

All the bad taste is in the mud vein.

[richhodg66]

I also found it good in any catfish stew or fish chowder recipes you can find.

If you don't bowfish, they are also a lot of fun on hooks and lines. Get a fairly small hook, some canned corn and a split shot or two to keep it down. Go where you've seen carp, chum the spot with about 3/4 of the can of corn, put a few kernels on the hook and put it where you just chummed and hang on. Once they take a hook, it's very hard for them to spit it as the have tough, rubbery mouths. In my experience, they don't fight like a bass would, but will make one very hard pull for deep water and once you get it turned you have him. They are strong and tend to get big, no other fresh water fish I know where you can routinely catch ten pound fish. In fact, the only time I ever had a fish break a rod on me, it was a carp.

[geargnasher]

We used to catch them on Fig Newtons in the tailwaters of several small hydro-electric dams along some of the local rivers in central Texas. Mom would clean the iced fish per Perfesser's method and soak them for a few hours to over night in a mixture of salt brine and grapefruit juice, then pressure-cook them to mush and make "carp patties" out of them. Toasted rye bread or whole wheat crackers with dill slices or even pickled jalepenos was the vehicle for consumption, and I must say it was pretty dang good.

Gear

[richhodg66]

I always turned my nose up with carp until a couple of years ago. Was doing a lot of canning and decided to take off fishing. Caught a couple of carp and decided, why not. Had heard that if canned you would change your opinion quickly. They came from clean fresh water and I kept them carefully cold until at home. Filleted them out and quickly canned them. All I can say it was the finest, most delicate flavored canned fish I had ever had. The bones were simply not there. Mixed with some crushed up crackers, egg white and some seasoning then baked or fried they are as good as anything you can get.
Will be bow fishing soon as things warm up and you can bet none will be just thrown up on the bank.
If you have never tried properly prepared carp you might want to remain a little more open minded.

PS

Much and I do mean much better than the "slimmers", put and take trout that so many make so much over !!

Mind sharing how you canned it? I picked up a HUGE pressure cooker for a song at a thrift shop a few years ago with the intention of doing just that. The project stalled and I haven't gotten to it yet.

I know virtually nothing about canning or pressure cookers, so please feel free to dumb down any explanations to the layman's level.

[aiken]

I had an older neighbor that ground up the meat after a thorough cleaning and made patties out of them to deal with the bones. Will have to try canning them

[William Yanda]

Not from experience but Gefilte fish-a Yiddish dish

[Reg]

Mind sharing how you canned it? I picked up a HUGE pressure cooker for a song at a thrift shop a few years ago with the intention of doing just that. The project stalled and I haven't gotten to it yet.

I know virtually nothing about canning or pressure cookers, so please feel free to dumb down any explanations to the layman's level.

This might not be the best method but this is what I do.
First , when filleting , clamp the tail and start from the tail and go to the head. They have big overlapping scales and those scales are tough. If you start from the head you fight it all the way and usually don't do the best job. It seems like your knife will naturally follow the back bone if you start at the tail. I use an electric knife, not one of the expensive Cabela's specials but rather one you can pick up at many yard sales for a buck or so. They work just fine. Once filleted I do cut around some of the bigger ribs around the stomach area and cut off the stomach skin. You don't have to get them all, the pressure cooker will take care of everything else. Yes. Do remove the mud vein as some call it. The dark strip of skin down the center. It actually is a sensory nerve and makes the meat taste bad. Wash the meat strips well and soak over night in a light salt brine. Do keep the meat or the fish chilled until you are ready to actually can. Next day prepare your jars, I like wide mouth pints, and rinse the fish well then tightly pack the jars leaving one inch of headspace, do not add any liquid, it will make it's own juice as it cooks.. Pressure can for one hour and forty minutes at 10 pounds pressure. Adjust your pressure for altitude. I am at 3500 feet so I run it at 11 pounds and if it creeps up to 12 I don't get to worried. Do run the full time, never less.
I highly recommend the Ball Blue Book of canning for all things concerning canning. Only thing I disagree with them on is they talk about leaving the outer skin on the fish. You cannot remove that mud vein without taking that skin off and you do want that vein gone.
Some have in past threads mentioned using spices, hot sauce and other things to flavor the fish and I bet some are really good, just haven't had time to play with them.
First time I ever did this I thought the wife was going to lose it when I told her what I did. A couple of weeks later I made up a couple fried fish cakes and got her to try just "one bite". She has been hooked ever since. For a canned fish, it's the best I ever had. Having baked fish cakes tonight in fact and Yup, it's carp !!

"Try it you will like it !!"

Another thing, I don't normally like Large Mouth Bass. A little oily and boney for my taste but just for the heck of it I canned a couple of big one's I caught and they tasted as good as the carp in fact not too long ago I caught a couple of carp and a couple of 18" plus LM and just processed the whole mess. I can't tell them apart when canned.

[Bzcraig]

Oh, heck no!

[JWFilips]

When I was young my mother took any "Bony" fish and made fish soup. My father loved it. Even though I liked all the weird foods my life has thrown at me... That was never on my list. This past summer I treaded the same waters when my wife & I brought back a pile of Crappie which I filleted and froze but the lure of all that cling on bone meat & the fish heads really got to me so I made fish bullion stock...Froze 6 containers of it..... ate one ...mixed one into a hot curry stew....but the rest are sitting at the bottom of the freezer....Thai fish sauce is far more tasty in Curry as far as I'm concerned.

But We did eat carp in my family when I was young.... It must have come from the fact that my mother worked as a "house keep" for a well to do Jewish family! All I can say Polish altered Blintzes are yummy!

[MaryB]

Best to learn the mechanics of canning with a water bath canner and high acid foods before you tackle pressure canning!

Mind sharing how you canned it? I picked up a HUGE pressure cooker for a song at a thrift shop a few years ago with the intention of doing just that. The project stalled and I haven't gotten to it yet.

I know virtually nothing about canning or pressure cookers, so please feel free to dumb down any explanations to the layman's level.

[MaryB]

Filet the carp out then soak in a strong brine seasoned with whatever you like, I prefer a simple salt and a bit of sugar brine. Put fish in smoker on racks and hot smoke at 145 until the fish is flaky. Vacuum pack and freeze or pressure can. Tasty stuff on crackers. If pressure canning smoke at lower temps and do not cook it through.canning will cook it you just want it to pick up a lot of smoke.

[richhodg66]

Basically, that's how I used to smoke them. Carp are oily and they smoke real well. I just used a cheap charcoal smoker, I suppose I could get better results with something I could regulate better. For brine, I soaked them overnight in water with a bunch of salt and brown sugar dissolved in it.

[DLCTEX]

We prepared them by heading, gutting, skinning, and then cutting away all red flesh that is along the lateral line in a thin layer. Cook in a pressure cooker (don't remember how long) until you can grasp the spine and gently shake, letting the flesh fall off the bone. The bones will usually come away intact. Discard bones, drain, and use meat as a substitute for tuna in a casserole. Milder flavored than tuna.We caught them in the Clear Fork of the Brazos where the gypsum in the water binds with any clay and settles out. Fish from the waters do not have a muddy taste at all.