Any recipes for long nose gar?

[Winger Ed.]

I usually keep a line in the canal at the end of the yard, and have caught lots of catfish &
crappie when they come to the shallower water in the Spring.

We were sitting around this evening and it sounded like somebody fell in the lake.
Upon further investigation, I had caught a 8 pound long nose gar.

I've never landed & kept one out of clean water before.
So after taking a few classes from Professor youtube, I cleaned & filleted it.
The yield on them isn't great, and you have to take certain precautions with their innards,
but the two fillets weighed in right at 2 pounds.

Frying it like any other fresh water fish is probably fine, but I thought I'd check and see if anyone had
some classic 'this is how Grandma did it' recipes.

[trapper9260]

What I do is boil some water with salt in a pot and then cut the fillets in about 1" and then drop them in the water till they turn white and most of the time float. It will smell like you cooking lobster and eat as that . I put it in melted butter .

[Thundarstick]

Gar meat has a stringy consistency. We boiled the meat like you, pulled it apart with forks, and made gar balls ( crab cakes).

[Barry54]

I tried it once. Years ago. Co-worker had it cut into chunks battered and fried. It was delicious in my memory/opinion!

[jdfoxinc]

The scales (for want of a better word) between 2 layers of very tough skin, are a pure white almost ivory, and make very pretty jewelry.

[jdgabbard]

Best recipe I ever got was from one of the elders of the local tribe - not my tribe, just the one that inhabited the area I live in. A very wise man.

He told me the best way to cook gar was to smear it with a thick layer of butter, and wrap it in brown wrapping paper, aka brown paper sack paper. You place it on a baking dish, and place it in the over at 350 for 3 hours. After three hours you pull it out of the oven, and let it cool. After letting it cool to the touch, you unwrap the wrapping paper, throw the gar away, and eat the paper....

Did I mention that the elder had a good sense of humor?

[MaryB]

I clean it by just taking the "back straps" the piece of meat above the ribs and a little piece by the tail that is a more normal filet. I use an aviation tin snips instead of a scissors, makes it much easier to cut thru the skin. This video shows the cleaning method https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPvh6K22a_Y

We cut it into nuggets and deep fry it.

[Thundarstick]

To dress gar meat. Take a very sharp pointed filet knife and peirce between the scales then follow that line of scales to the center line, then to the belly. Do the same on the opposite side of the fish. They form a V shape on the sides top, and belly. Twist off the head, insert your filet knife into the body and free the flesh from the skin and ribs on both sides of the fish, move back on the body and repeat the first step to the depth of your blade. A gar fish can easily ruin a knife if you do it wrong, if you follow these directions you can easily dress one with a common filet knife. No shears,or hatchets need!

[gwpercle]

Just use your favorite Alligator Gar Fish recipe ... it will work just fine for the Needle Nose Gar variety .
I like Garfish Boulettes (Balls) in Brown Gravy ... served over Rice .
Gary

[Winger Ed.]

This video shows the cleaning method https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPvh6K22a_Y

That guy does it pretty much like a few other videos I'd watched.

Something I never thought of, but was in the recommendations beside it was preserving the skin- for lack of a better word.
Then a few about making leather out of gar and a few other kinds fish hides.
I knew eel skin leather turns up in various things, but never thought about other fish leather except shark.
Making kneif sheaths from the gar hide looks pretty cool. In the raw hide state, it looks like some tough stuff.

[gc45]

you all must be dang hungrey to eat them buggers!

[Winger Ed.]

you all must be dang hungrey to eat them buggers!

They're sort of like weeds in the yard:
They have qualities and virtues most people simply don't appreciate.

[Tripplebeards]

I’ve just cut the back straps out and sliced into small quarter size chunks and batter fried them quickly so they don’t get tough…. Tougher than they already are.lol. It reminds me of chewy alligator meat. It has a good taste, but super chewy. It was something I wanted to try once and it was fine but too much work and too chewy to waste my time doing it again. Same with bowfin/dogfish been there, did it, done it. Mushy meat on them but completely edible.

[ttd444]

ewww!!! i always threw them on the bank.

[Winger Ed.]

ewww!!! i always threw them on the bank.

In Texas it used to be illegal to return one to public waters unless it had been gutted or otherwise killed.

After that river monster TV show where the guy was pulling BIG!! ones out of the Trinity river below Dallas,,,,
now they are a game fish with size and bag limits.

[Jeff Michel]

Cast iron skillet, lightly brown on both sides, salt to taste. Throw the fish away and eat the skillet.