Asian Carp - Filleting & Cooking Recipes

Every day I go to work I feel like
I'm
the luckiest person in the whole wide world. To be able to go out there and set a
net
or to run the electro fishing boat   and watch fish come up to you,
weigh and measure them and know at the end of the day
I'm doing something to protect and preserve natural resources
for all the future generations to come. I love it, man, especially working with Asian carp. You know a lot of people really hate these fish.

I see it as let's use this as an opportunity
to learn
how to manage invasive species in Missouri. ≫> Oh, that is a big fish. ≫> Asian carp are brought to the United States
to control water quality in southern state aqua culture ponds. They subsequently escape from those aquaculture facilities and have now migrated into the Mississippi River basin.

Asian carp are having a negative effect on our native species. The solution is that there has to be
some form of harvest that would occur. So then the big question comes is that can these fish be fileted? And if they can be fileted, are they palatable? Do they have as good of a taste
as some of our more common fish? I'm going to show how to filet an Asian carp. The first cut I'm making here very similar to how
you
would filet a bass or a crappie or bluegill.

We're going to come back in now and just take
the
meat off of the top of the rib cage. Now we have one side of the Asian carp filet. Because the Asian carp filet is so wide,
we have to cut it in half, Just as we would with any fish is that
we
have to remove the skin from the flesh. One thing with Asian carp that we have
to
be mindful of when we're filleting them is that they do have a little bit
of red meat
that needs to be removed; kind of gives the meat a pungent taste
if you
don't get it all off of there.

Then you can see in the very center of the filet
there's
a series of bones that come through the top. What we want to do now is to
be able to remove those Y bones. Since they are in the shape of a Y in this filet we're going to simply cut on both sides of
those
to get that flesh off of there. And there you have it, two boneless pieces from the top.

And then for the bottom we're going to do the same thing. We're got to find those Y bones and make our cut out. That is one half of a boneless Asian carp filet. So we did a taste test.

We had 307 people that took part in this taste test. And basically what we found is that
an overwhelming majority of the people whether the fish was steamed or fried,
chose Asian carp as their favorite. So that means that they liked them better than
everybody's favorite tilapia and catfish. The best thing about this is by eating Asian carp

we're actually doing the Mississippi River a favor.

So whether you're frying them up old school style
in a cast iron skillet,  or if you prefer an Asian twist with carp on
a stick,
don't knock them until you try them. Asian carp are actually a really delicious fish to eat..