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CARP, Trash or Treasure .

16K views 64 replies 49 participants last post by  nicktide 
#1 ·
#37 ·
As like when you clean a catfish, nail the freshly caught carp to a board while scaling/gutting. Rinse with plenty of clean water, add onions and garlic to the gut area, sprinkle with plenty seasoning salts then cook in the oven for 20 minutes @ 350 degrees. Once this is done remove from oven, throw away the carp and eat the board...
 
#39 ·
The rivers here in Aus are full of them, they are the biggest pest in our river systems, the rivers are also mainly mud bottoms so we consider them largely inedible. A chef friend spent years trying to find ways to get rid of the muddy tasty and the best he could manage was flavour neutral or tasting of whatever flavouring he cooked them in, which l can assure you was a vast improvment. The only commercial fishermen that take them turn them into garden fertalizer.

That being said if push comes to shove they will be on the menu.
 
#43 ·
Back home in Missouri we'd catch & eat anything dumb enough to bite including carp. Trick of it is in the cleaning. When you gut the fish make sure not to rupture the oil vein that runs through them and then fillet the meat.

Now, my grandma always soaked catfish and carp in milk for a half hour before she breaded and fried them. Just a simple breading of cornmeal, salt, pepper and an egg to make it stick. She had a big cast iron skillet that she'd toss a spoon full of bacon grease into. Fry up the fish and enjoy!
 
#44 ·
Carp are considered trash fish by most anglers around here . Blue gills (we call them kivvers) are also considered trash .
I've caught just about every species of fresh water fish that are common around here but I only eat the trout I catch .
If times were hard I wouldn't throw anything back .

I'm not much of a cook . I find a way of cooking things that works for me and stick with it .

Any kind of fish I cook is done the same way - Dip the fish in a beaten egg , roll it in bread crumbs or corn meal and fry it in olive oil . Sometimes I'll add garlic .
 
#45 ·
Carp live well in some pretty dirty conditions. This leads to them tasting bad in a lot of situations. My mother said her father would catch a big carp from the river on monday. They'd toss it in a pond they had that was fed by a clean artesian well, and feed it cracked corn for the week. By Saturday it was all cleaned out and they'd have it for dinner and it was good. She said they NEVER ate them freshly caught because even the cats wouldn't eat it.
 
#49 ·
I've had good carp, and I've had awful carp, it's all in the prep.

I had a polish neighbor in Detroit who'd serve it in the fall. She had her husband bring home couple big ones he caught alive, and she'd take it over from there.

She had a kiddy pool (one of those cheap plastic ones from Walmart) that set under her maple tree. She fed them corn meal and kept the water fresh. After a week, the carp would be cleaned out and she did the cleaning of the carp.

She fixed them two ways, baked in the oven and deep fried. Both ways were really good.
 
#51 ·
As mentioned previously, it's illegal to throw them back in the water in Australia. They have crowded out most of the native fish in our rivers. We have eaten them. Very boney, but a small to medium fish is ok with plenty of salt and lemon juice or vinegar. We've also taken them home to use as fertilizer in the garden. I knew of one man who cooked them and fed them to his poultry.
 
#55 ·
I read that koi were raised in rice paddies by Japanese peasants as a sustainable protein source. There's a shallow pond on my hunting lease I'm trying to get set up for koi, since they're more tolerant of heat and cold than any other meat fish I know of. Once there's enough plant cover I'm going to buy reject (ugly) koi from a local breeder and stock the pond with them. In a few years I'll have another food source.
 
#64 ·
They are popular here (Eastern Europe) and fresh caught from the rivers - none of that factory farm garbage fed on human waste. It really depends on the pollution level of your waterways; ours are clean.

Carp is sold daily more than any other fish, it’s so popular we have a soup, which is served on Christmas day. Yeah, no turkey, fish soup on xmas, you heard me right. Our “Cabelas” type stores stock stuff just for carp fishing, it’s a big hobby.
 
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