Eel - the drink of champions

edgar :

i'll pass on the eel drink , but a nicely smoked eel is a tasty treat !



i wouldn't try the eels from the heavily polluted lake ontario , but when we are in germany we make sure to have a nicely smoked eel - best when they are just coming out of the smoke-house - still a litte warm .
i'm als like jellied eel !
hbg

Nothing like some good eel, I always say.

Many times, fishing aound Corpus Christi (Corpus, we Texans fondly call it), eels are all we catch. To a man, the fishrs I have seen feed them to the cats.

chai wrote :



when i spend a month in austin in the spring of '79 , i didn't see eel listed on any restaurant menus .
has anything changed :wink: ?
hbg

I had some fantastic smoked eel from Milbree Viking smokehouse today. It was sooooooo delicious.

Eel r gud.
I like it smoked with a sweet gingery unagi accompanying sauce.

We catch a lot in minner traps at home and if theres enuff in there, Ill get the smoker fired up.
Chesapeake bay is where most of the Western poplation of eels wind up.

Are all eels good eating, or certain ones? Reason I ask, the fishers in Corpus Texas don't seem to eat any they catch.

I think they're talkin' freshwater, not saltwater.

In many cases the same thing. Freshwater eels found in the eastern US and european eels are the same species. They spawn in the sargasso sea, mature to near adulthood (eelet) in shallow tidal areas of the US and Europe and swim up the rivers to mature to full eeldom. Finally they return to the Sargasso sea to spawn the next generation.

So that eel you smoke over hickory in the lower Ohio valley may have a cousin being smoked on the banks of the Marne.

As for the Japanese eel cola it couldn't taste any worse than some of those overpriced power drinks being poffered at every convienance store in North America.

BTW--I once tried green an experimental carbonated beverage made from Okra---wasn't bad--tasted a little like Mountain Dew--but the name 'Okracola' kinda sucked, particularly when it was pasted to the side of a NASCAR. I don't think Eelcola would work today either, unless it would be 'Electric.'

Rap

There are a couple hundred species of eel. The one we are most familiar with is Anguilla rostrata (the AMerican eel), the European eel, Anguilla anguilla is basically the same species with a different location. These are catadromous fish (unlike anadromous which spend their yout in the sea and return to fresh water to spawn, eels spend their youth and mid years in fresh water, and then return to the Sargasso to spawn).

The rest of the species will be used opportunistically by the rest of the world. There are some species that live only in fresh water but in Eastern Us, these are not commercially sought (like the lamprey which are disgusting proto hagfish).

I red recently that the "eel farms" in Maryland Pa and Delaware are going great guns because of the rapid decline of anguillae in the wild. The eel farms raise really nice prime ells for the European and Asian markets and collect the skins for a high quality leather used for wallets and briefcases.

Id like to visit an eel farm to see how they keep these critters from getting loose.

We used to do eel fishing when I was a kid. My dad and some buds would

1get lots of beer

2 get fishing lines and make eel "sets" which are like a version of a catfish trotline. These would be set out in stretches of small streams , usually at sunset of a June day. Then theyd go and build a fire and sit around drinking beer and bullshitting. I would listen and suck up all the lies and stories about giant eels in small creeks. This would , of course scare the crap out of us kids.

3every few hours after dark, wed go and check the lines. I recall that each line was ties off with strips of white cloth so we could see em.
Wed check the lines and place the eels in a tightly locked cooler. (One year one of my cousins and I didnt close the lid and what was a nice catch of eels was reduced to one or two remainders as the others all escaped by slithering over the ground and back into the stream. Eels have a rudimentary lung and can "walk" large disrtances on land. Fox and Otters and (newly reintroduced to the Susquehanna Basin) are Martens , all of whom opportunistically feed on eels and are smart enough to know that eels get around dams by getting out of the water and slithering around the dams.

Besides smoked and sushi'd (unagi is semi smoked), are there any other recipes that Asians or German use to make eel?


Love to eat them eels
eels a tasty treat
I crunch they little backbones
then munch they tiny feet

(well thats pretty much correct except for the feet part)