Processing of the Shad
I went fishing in Oregon a couple weeks ago for the second time in ten years with my experienced outdoorsman friend Jeff and my survivor-weekend-to-be and otherwise good friend friend John (the first time I went fishing in OR was a salmon charter with my parents a few years ago. This was no so much as fishing as sitting in someone else’s boat, waiting for them to hook a fish and then let you reel it in. It was fun though, nonetheless). Here’s Jeff’s post about the trip, and my email response to how cleaning/cooking the bounty went:
It was a bit of a fail :(. I selected the most fillet-knife looking knife we had, sharpened it with the steel, laid a bunch of newspapers all over the deck, and pulled out the first fish. It was one of the middle sized ones and I could NOT hold onto it because of all the slime! In hindsight I should have washed them really well. Live and learn. I was just barely able to get my knife through the backbone to cut the head off, and when I cut it open to get out the guts, it was full of roe! That was pretty neat — I hear in the east they cook and eat the roe for breakfast, but I discarded them. I had to use a pair of pliers to hold onto the tail to get the fillet cut off. It was a little ragged but had a decent amount of meat. Next for skinning (this is where it all went south): I again had to use the pliers to hold onto it then ran the knife up the inside of the skin. This was *very* hard — my lack of fish cleaning experience was really showing. The final fillet looked even more ragged, but there was a decent amount of meat left. I then did the other side of the fish, but that piece was even smaller, and even more ragged. Feeling somewhat defeated, I went for the largest fish thinking it would be easier to fillet, but realized I probably wasn’t going to be able to get the head cut off without fetching a butcher’s knife, and my smaller knife was going to make cutting the flesh off pretty difficult; it was a pretty good sized fish. It had taken 30 minutes to do the first fish, my newspapers we SOAKED with fish goo and I didn’t want to have to clean them for every fish, so I gave up. I figured I had enough meat to cook that I’d know what eating shad is like so I tossed the rest of the fish in the garbage. Sorry world for wasting :(.
Cooking:
The meat looked nice — typical white fish, like a piece of sole. I decided to prepare it simple so that I could see what the meat tasted like. I pan fried the fillet in a little olive oil, and make a sauce of soy sauce, honey, white wine vinegar, and cilantro, and drizzled it around the plate.
Eating:
I forked up a flake on my fork and took my first bite. It was good! A little rubbery but I might have overcooked it (was cooking on the conservative side). I was excited and took it to Lyza (who was in bed) to try, but she wasn’t feeling like eating fish at 11:30 so I had it all to myself. For the next bite I forked an even bigger piece, with some of the sauce, and bit down. Into a mouthFUL of bones. Lots of bones. I was really surprised. I know they say shad are boney, but I couldn’t believe this. They were really small and I could have chewed them up and swallowed them, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant, and this WAS NOT our Survivor-weekend. So I again wasted and tossed it into the garbage disposal.
Conclusion:
1) I need real fish cleaning equipment.
2) I need better fish cleaning skills and patience.
3) Shad is not going to replace gorcery-store-bought whitefish in our house any time soon.
4) The meat looked nice, held together, wasn’t fishy tasting at ALL, and tasted reasonably good.
5) They were fun to catch!
So, I’m still excited about shad fishing and would love to go again soon before the run is done. But I might ask for some assistance cleaning next time since I am pretty bad at it. I’m still really interested in trying/finding a way to cook them to mitigate the bone problem.
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