IceShanty.com's Ice Fishing Community
Ice Fishing Tips -Check your local regulations! => Eelpout => Topic started by: sploke on Dec 10, 2018, 10:28 AM
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Buddy of mine sent this to me last night, thought it was worth sharing.
Question - has anyone saved a burbot liver to prepare for eating? How was it?
https://www.themeateater.com/video/butchering-and-processing/steven-rinellas-tips-for-cleaning-burbot
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A friend of mine in Alaska makes liver pate out of them and says it's great. He says the natives he fished with say it is the best part of the burbot. I have tried them fried with onions and could still taste the cod liver oil I was forced to swallow as a kid (I'm 70). My guess is the traditional French pate spices might hide it, but I now give them to the crows. No complaints from them.
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Interesting, I've always kept the filets and belly meat, made stock with the heads and frames and tossed the rest. Maybe I'll try some this time around.
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That's a pretty rough skinning job.
The neck cut should go through the skin only, and should go all the way around. The skin does come off (and much easier than what they experienced in the video), but it does want to tear the meat, so doing it carefully preserves a lot of meat and the character of each fillet and belly. If they're frozen or partly frozen it's a lot trickier.
I bring mine home whole and have a skinning tree with a big hook for burbot skinning. If you slit the flesh below the jaw you can hang it on the hook and pull the skin with pliers on each side, or easily work your way around.
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i don't skin em anymore. just clean the same way you would and cut the skin off after. easy peezy and it doesn't looke like a murder scene when you're done.
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Can't speak for burbot livers but a few years back the fam forced me into a "non-fishing" vacation. Dad, we wanna stay in motels, swim in the pools, play miniature golf, blah, blah, blah. I said fine, I get to pick where the road trip takes us. We circumnavigated Michigan's UP. Had a boat load of fun. I never even took a rod along.
OK, to the point, every place we stopped for dinner had the same entree' on the menu, whitefish livers and onions. Hmmmm. I happen to like liver. A lot. But fish livers? Meh. Finally, after about the fifth day up on Lake Superior I caved. I am a culinary adventurer and will try most anything so I figured why not? What's the worst they can be? It was a very pleasant surprise. Perfectly fried (like NOT to shoe leather) and seasoned with a pile of traditional caramelized onions. Not as soft as chicken livers, which are not my favorite, not tough, not fishy tasting at all, really nothing negative I can say about them. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I say: Go for it! Gonna take a bunch of burbot to make a meal but what the hey. If you like liver my bet is you'll like these. Bet most of your friends will chip in their catch. Liver, after all, is an acquired taste. Salt, pepper, dredge 'em flour and fry 'em in bacon grease if you got it. Mmmmm!
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Thanks Matt great video.