Flavor like you wouldn’t believe.įresh fish is both a joy and a privilege, and thus the short window of time to enjoy such quality should not be squandered. Most of all, there is flavor in the fish’s head. Ignore it at the market, and you lose out on one of the best bargains in town. Throw it away, and you’ve lost a significant percentage of your catch. There may be bountiful meat found tucked in and around the collar of the fish, encased in the cheeks, and perched atop its forehead. Unlike, say, the head of a chicken, a great deal of a fish’s net weight (in most cases) is in its head.
You tube fish heads full#
I’m that guy that shows up to these places with a cooler full of ice and a fistful of dollar bills. I’ve witnessed massive hauls of striped bass in the San Francisco Bay unceremoniously decapitated and filleted, then stood by haplessly as I watched men heave plastic bins full of heads back into the cold ocean water.įor a real show, stop by Biscayne Boulevard in Miami when the sport fishing charters return in the late afternoon and the first mates throw kilos worth of discarded fish heads back into a Tarpon-infested marina. I’ve seen piles of glistening bluefish heads doomed for the landfill after a day’s trip off the New Jersey Shore, and I’ve seen paint buckets full of crappie heads tossed into the North Carolina woods for stray cats and raccoons. But whether we are inclined to the fresh or the saltwater species, prejudice against every part of the fish besides the fillet transcends salinity and states alike. This exercise in extreme waste is particularly true among the legions of sport fisherman who, like myself, endeavor to bring home the day’s catch. Finally, cooking whole fish with intact heads can be an intimidating undertaking, and so we create distance by cutting and slicing until we are left with anonymous flanks of lean fillets only. For others, the very name of a fish ( Patagonian Toothfish) may be so psychologically unpalatable so as to necessitate a new, more edible name ( Chilean sea bass). Some struggle with picking small bones from their mouths. Our culture typically rejects things that look slimy, and fish are indeed slimier than a cow.
There’s a lot that goes into this, I imagine. This is all to say that we end up wasting a lot of edible fish and fish parts. We end up wasting a lot of edible fish and fish parts. And even then, the culinary possibilities we envision for those fillets are limited still: baking, deep-frying or pan-searing come to mind. The fish’s head suffers a similar, arbitrary prejudice as we shun all parts but the faceless fillets. But here in the US, not only is carp almost never found on a menu, they more frequently serve as swimming targets for bowfishermen who, at best, use the carcasses as fertilizer. In fact, our common American carp species are actually prized both as a sportfish and as a food source in Asia and Western Europe. We relish the golden nuggets of deep-fried catfish ”“ a whiskered, bottom-dwelling scavenger ”“ yet we are off put by the humble carp, whose lifestyle is nearly identical. We moan at the thought of a seared fillet of black cod, yet wince at the thought of its face on our plate. Like most food choices, region and culture largely determine what we deem fit for the table and what we consider inedible. American cuisine has a curious relationship with fish.
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