Beer Batter Sea Lamprey....Not too shabby!

After killing our lamprey, which was harder than we expected we opened it up and noticed that there were thousands of eggs inside. We should have got a male, but it was too late. Lamprey's can lay up to 40,000 eggs! We did not try lamprey caviar, but please go for it and let us know how it comes out.

Here is the recipe of beer batter lamprey.
Ingredients:
Sea Lamprey
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
Beer (don't waste good beer here)
1 cup Flour

Mix the flour, salt, pepper & garlic together (to taste) then slowly mix in beer until the batter looks thick and smooth like pancake batter. Let that sit for 20 minutes before using. While that is resting prepare the lamprey.

 Clean the lamprey, but cutting off the head and gutting it, then chop it into 4 inch pieces. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and drop the lamprey in for 30 seconds.

Then immediately remove the fish from the water and wipe it off with a dry towel. Wipe hard enough to get the cooked slime off. If you did it correctly the fish should look terrible and kind of a grey color.

Now chop the fish into 1 inch medallions, and drop them into the batter. Heat a cast iron skillet with a half inch of canola oil. Now drop the lamprey in and cook until it's golden brown on both sides, roughly 3 minutes.
Serve immediately.

Even Fishways Director Helen Dalbeck ate the lamprey!

We shared this with about 20 people at the Amoskeag Fishways, food should be shared, the flavor of lamprey can best be described as tasting like lamprey... very unique, there are no bones so you can eat all parts of this fish.

Even little Sammy Groves love Lamprey!