Smelt!

[soshea99]

My wife will not eat smelts, but I think they are a treat. The only way we can get them around here is frozen. They come gutted & headless.

I take them from the freezer & run them under cold water to remove the ice coating (they are flash frozen with a fine coat of ice). Dab them dry & dip them in a little flour that has plenty of salt & pepper. Place one layer in a non-stick pan that has a hot mixture of olive oil & butter (enough oil so that the butter doesn't burn - also, not enough to cover the fish). When you have placed the last one in the pan, start turning them over. Another minute & they will be done.

Drain on paper towel. Eat the bones, they are good for you. The flesh should be moist.

[gus_tatory]

as someone who hails (hales?) from Nova Scotia, i'm going to ignore the negative stuff here said about smelts. as with mackerel, you either like it or you don't.

done in a coating of cornflour, cornmeal, black and red pepper they can be excellent. i would compare the best prepared smelts to the best prepared salt-and-pepper calamari.

[Nick]

I cut off the heads and gut. Then pat dry and coat first with egg and then cornmeal. Fry in whatever oil you want - I use evoo. When they're done, I pull out the backbone and eat everything, including the tail. I think the crunchy tail is the best part. The smelt HAVE to be fresh, no more than a day out of the water. The cornmeal should also be fairly fresh, not stale.

[tsquare]

They were served at a local restaurant yesterday as the lunch special - smelt BLT sandwiches - with the heads on and bones in. All snuggled up between two slices of bread, tails and heads protruding. No, I didn't try it, but the person who did said he cut off the heads and ate them, then proceeded to enjoy the sandwich.

[agnolottigirl]

OK, so I did try them (sorry for the delay--was out of town), and they weren't half-bad.

Smaller ones were better (crunchier and smaller bones, naturally), and I used the flour/cornmeal frying suggestion, since that seemed to be the winner. They're not going to become a new kitchen staple, but they were worth the $2.00 a pound I paid.

Biggest drawback: fried-fish smell in the house. Oogy. . . I had to leave on a trip right after that, so left Mr. Agonolotti to enjoy the fishy-greasy-smelty-smell by his lonesome.