Lionfish any good to eat?

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Spines are venomous. Near impossible to filet. Snap off venomous spines with wire cutters or equivalent, clean, and grill or put in foil with seasonings. Delicious!
 
Evidently, lion fish are venomnous, not poisonous like fugu liver. If you can avoid their spines by wearing heavy gloves as you yank the spines off with pliers, you are safe.
 
Nasty stingers, but so do Australian catfish have poisonous spines (the eel tailed cats).

Apparently delicious.

Eat them, it's good for the world.
 
Of course, I'm not anywhere near lionfish, but some of the documentaries I've seen on where they've been invasive have stated that there are campaigns to push the food value of them and encourage angling.
 
Andrew Zimmern included Lion Fish in a Bizarre Foods America episode from the Florida keys. Slides 10 and 11. From what I remember from seeing that episode, the Lionfish were described as very tasty.
 
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Lionfish are invading the waters here on the northern Gulf of Mexico. The state of Florida has a campaign to encourage the spearfishing and trapping of lionfish from the Gulf. Underwater pictures of reefs infested with them are disturbing. They are swarming around the reefs like rats, eating everything in sight.

As part of the eradication effort the state is encouraging restaurants to offer lionfish on the menu, and many have begun to do so. One local restaurant has become famous for its lionfish dip.

From the FWC: "Lionfish are commonly used as a food fish in many parts of the world and are considered to be of excellent quality by most who have tried it. When cooked, lionfish fillets are firm, white and flaky with a very mild, non-fishy taste that is comparable to snapper, black sea bass or hogfish. Lionfish can be substituted in recipes for other nonoily fish and can be fried, broiled, baked, steamed or poached. While the spines of lionfish do contain venomous tissue, the flesh of a lionfish is not venomous or poisonous. Several Florida restaurants, seafood markets, and grocery stores are now serving limited amounts of commercially harvested lionfish."
 
The last three posts are encouraging to me.

Here. the European carp was introduced (by migrants), so that they could eat their beloved fish that were easy to catch (sweet corn on a hook) compared to trout (again, introduced, but class warfare has that as acceptable).

Carp, if you catch them must be humanely killed, and left at least (IIRC) 30 feet from the waterway.

Companies that tried to commercialise the carp into a garden fertiliser product were long rejected, as the logic went that to make a profit from a noxious pest would mean that you wouldn't eradicate that noxious pest...so just let them go berzerk.

Not sure what changed, as I've got some charlie carp to go on the garden.

But to encourage consumption is a great thing.

To semi paraphrase one of my favourite philosophers, where does one draw the line on what's a normal distribution of species ? The old world of Europe would look a lot different if they rejected all of the things that they picked up from South America (think Ireland without Potatoes, the Mediterranean without Tomatoes, bell peppers and Chillies)
 
I've heard good things.

Apparently they sell the stuff at seafood places down in Florida.

I love seafood and fish anyways, but I'd try it.
 
Originally Posted By: Collingwood
I've been eating fish recently , but not this kind.

What kind of fish do you get there in New Jersey? Large ones?
 
The Asian Carp is taking over the Mississippi water shed. Not a freshwater fish fan, except for wild trout. Pythons are living in the Everglades. We're not talking about food stuff here like introduced vedgies to Europe, but pests upsetting the ecology. Some doofis let these go and they have nothing in the ecology to counter them.
 
Plecostomous have been dumped in rivers … somebody done with a fish tank and “doing right” … these have no natural enemies and now not limited in growing by tank size …
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
Of course, I'm not anywhere near lionfish, but some of the documentaries I've seen on where they've been invasive have stated that there are campaigns to push the food value of them and encourage angling.


Because of the lionfish's habitat, it's not conducive to angling, they have to be spear-fished - very labor intensive. I've seen that episode of Bizarre Foods that included lionfish, that's where I first heard of it as a seafood.

Shark Tank had two guys fishing for investment in their lionfish seafood venture... they were turned down:

Shark Tank Lionfish episode
 
Yes, they're gulper feeders. In protected marine parks, tbese invasive fish with no natural enemies in the Atlantic / Caribbean / Gulf of Mexico are the only fish allowed to be taken. Typical take method is a short multi-prong spear about the length of your forearm. These are ambush predators so they don't swim fast and can be very closely approached underwater - they have little fear response to anything. They depopulate these areas of juvenile fish that use reefs to grow into fish large enough to reproduce.

No one has yet figured out what keeps them in check in their natural environment in the Pacific, Indian, Red Sea, etc. that I've heard.
 
Originally Posted By: Blokey
Because of the lionfish's habitat, it's not conducive to angling, they have to be spear-fished - very labor intensive. I've seen that episode of Bizarre Foods that included lionfish, that's where I first heard of it as a seafood.

That, I believe, was also mentioned on one of the documentaries. I'm far from an expert on how to get much done in the way of the ocean, much less lionfish. Northern Saskatchewan is where most of my fishing has been done, and I'm sure the lionfish wouldn't enjoy this place.
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