Sheephead/Croaker

[Joe McClain]

Chef Geoff,

When I lived in Lakewood, one of the commonest fish to catch was the sheephead or fresh-water drum. No one ate them. Now that I live in the Tidewater I catch a lot of croaker, which look just like sheephead. Everyone eats croaker. You bring home a bucket and dump 'em in the sink and they grunt at you while you clean their cousins. They're delicious. If you don't catch them, you can buy them at the store.

The question: Why do we eat croaker eagerly, but not sheephead? Can you go out and catch a mess o' sheephead and prepare them, let us know how they were?

[Jeff Endress]

Joe;

There was a move about 20 years ago to "rename" the sheephead the fresh water drum. There was some thought that if you changed the name, there might be some commercial viability for the fish or at least when you got a drum, instead of a walleye, you wouldn't discard it. Obviously it didn't work. People were put off by the fact that a frsh water drum tasted like a sheephead. Anyway, here's my family recipe for sheephead.

Clean and scale one sheephead. Place a 2 in square block of cherry wood in its mouth (substitute mesquite for SW flavor, hickory for cajun).

Cover in P.O.C. and marinate (refrigerated) over night.

Using a smoker (or VERY SLOW charcoal fire) smoke over fruit wood for 6 hours.

Remove from smoker, discard fish and eat cherry block.

Chef Geoff

[Stan Austin]

[Jeff Endress]

Mess o' smelt......just doesn't sound like something you'd wanna eat.
(besides, the damn things look like jumbo minnows).

Jeff

[Grace O'Malley]

When fishing in Lake Erie, you always end up with a few sheepshead. Since I hate to waste anything, I have cleaned and cooked the fish along with the perch.

In spite of mixing it in with the "better" fish, and cooking it in the same manner, my kids were able to pick out the sheephead filets.

They have a more oily, slightly metallic flavor. If you cook them even a bit too much, the flesh gets very rubbery.

In spite of several attempts to prepare them in an attractive way, I could never get anyone to eat more than a taste, so I gave up.

[Jim O'Bryan]

In spite of several attempts to prepare them in an attractive way, I could never get anyone to eat more than a taste, so I gave up.

Grace

Having had the opportunity to taste your cooking I am tending to agree with you and Chef Geoff about the best ways to cook Freshwater Croaker, don't.

But perhaps having walked through your garden a better use might be throwing them in the Bass-O-Matic, chop them up and use them in the garden.

Jim O'Bryan

[Joe McClain]

I grew up on the Ohio River, where these same fish are indeed called "drum." Down in Cajun country, these fish, or another just like it are called gaspergou and are apparently an important commercial fish. Could it be the Lake Erie water or something?

I rather suspect that most of us have eaten sheephead at one time or another, probably in the form of a fast food sandwich or the dreaded institutional slabfish.