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All I want for Christmas is a super expensive Japanese eel. I mean, I hate snakes but these ultra expensive and toxic snake-fishes are popular among Japanese food lovers for their exquisite taste and juicy tenderness. However, there's a catch: instead of their saliva, their blood is poisonous and it is vital that it be removed before cooking, you know, if you want to survive the experience.
If you're a bit of a foodie and you've tried all the traditional high palate foods in your country, why not travel to Japan and expand your horizons. One of the most essential dishes in Japanese cuisine is the Japanese Eel. It is most commonly served in the Unagi capital of Japan, Nagoya, widely reputed to be the location for the best eel in the world.
Before you come into the comments with your nerd glasses on to tell me that the Japanese eel is not its actual name, let me just stop you by saying right now that the technical name of the Japanese eel is the Anguilla japonica and that they are an integral part of Japanese food culture. It is known as kabayaki when served grilled and it is a species of the anguilla eel.
Widely reputed to be the most expensive fish in Japan, the Japanese eel can be found in smoked, fresh and frozen forms, all of which have their place in the rich and delicious food culture in Japan. I have to say at this point that I just love how Japanese culture puts so much heart and soul into their food.
One drawback to having such great tastes, of course, is the price, as I'm sure you've learned from watching our videos. Japanese food does NOT come cheap. In fact, in January 2018, a kilogram of these baby eels cost a stunning $35,000. That's more expensive than my car. That's even more expensive than Bluefin Tuna.
Some people say that this price is justified because Japanese Eel isn't just tasty, it is also supposed to give legendary strength and stamina. Aside from this, it is also supposed to prevent weight loss in the summer and as such is traditionally eaten during the hottest part of the summer to provide strength and vitality for the rest of the year.
Do They Really Look Like Snakes?
Unfortunately, yes. The Japanese Eel, much like eels all over the world, have a startling resemblance to snakes. But this isn't too much of an issue though, as the eels are actually very gentle. The full grown eel ranges from 1m to 1.3 m in length, has a long and slender body with a circular cross-section.
Unlike snakes, they have a big mouth, round eyes and a slimy body coated in mucus to make it more difficult to catch them. They swim really slowly and close to the bottom of their bodies of water which make them a bit tricky to spot and catch. This doesn't stop Japanese fishermen from catching an estimated 40 to 50 tons of the delicious eel every year though.
So, if there's so much supply, why is the Japanese eel still so expensive?
Well, they are described in ancient legends, and the Unagi freshwater eels have been a staple of the Japanese diet for over 5,000 years. In fact, Unagi bones have been discovered in shell mounds of the Jomon Period.
I'm not even surprised, since I instantly understood why the ancestors and boomers alike love this tasty food. The first time I tried the Japanese eel, I swear it tasted like a savory explosion of everything good in the world. It will melt-in-your-mouth, give you good taste, and at the end of the day, you'll be left feeling like you didn't eat anything at all.
This protein and fat rich dish can be prepared in a variety of ways, but the most popular style is called kabayaki in which the unagi filets are grilled and basted in a savory sweet sauce.
Mhmmm, delicious.
Unagi is a common ingredient in Japanese cooking. Unagi is most commonly served ingredient in so many different dishes. But here we will just talk about few popular dishes.
If you're in the mood for something more exotic, you can try the Japanese Eel in the form of Unaju, which is an Unagi box. Unaju (うな重) is essentially grilled eel filets served with cooked rice in a rectangular, lacquered box. It is commonly paired with a clear soup. And I wanna say that the serving boxes are GORGEOUS.
Next, you can get Japanese eel in the form of Unadon (うな丼) which is essentially the same dish as unaju with the main difference is that Unadon is served in a bowl instead of a lacquered box. Unadon (鰻丼) large bowl filled with steamed white rice, and topped with filets of eel (unagi) grilled in a style known as kabayaki, similar to teriyaki.
Next dish is Hitsumabushi (ひつまぶし), this is a Nagoya-specialty in which bite-sized pieces of grilled unagi are served over rice. But, here you can also eat Unagi with condiments, broth or tea to make ochazuke.
Now that you know all the ways to enjoy this delicious treat, it is important for me to bring a little bit of a sustainable message to the raising and farming of the Japanese eel. I'm sure we're all aware that our planet is changing and not really for the better. Thousands of years ago, the Japanese Eel had the right habitat of freshwater and unpolluted streams to thrive in, and as a result the Japanese Eel population seemed to be virtually unlimited. Nowadays, however, overfishing and changing water conditions due to pollution have made the Japanese Eel a species in decline phase.
In fact, I would say that this declining population of the Japanese Eel is one of the main reasons for its high price as fishermen often cannot get a good haul and the little they do get goes for a higher price as a result.
Funny enough, there's one part of Japan where the Eel hasn't been overfished into near extinction, and this is in Hino City, where legends claim that once upon a time a group of Japanese Eels protected the village from the flooding caused from the Tama-gawa River. Talk about multi-talented eels!
Sadly, in other parts of Japan they don't care so much about magical guardian eels, or at least, if they do, their sentiments are overshadowed by just how tasty & delicious these eels could be.
As a matter of fact, since 1980, the global catch of eel has declined by more than 75%, which has had a huge effect on price.
Why can't farmers simply just farm them in captivity, you may ask wisely. Well, that's because they still haven't figured out how to breed them in captivity so farmers have to resort to taking baby eels from the wild. This unsustainable practice is made even worse because these freshwater eels are carnivores and farmers have to catch even MORE fish to feed them, this gradually depleting the population of fish in the wild.
These eels love their expensive artificial food, so they have to be fed up to 3 times a day with a specific mixture of ingredients. It's a combination of fish meal, wheat, soybean meal, and fish oil. After six to 12 months of hard-work, eels are big enough to be sold. Their cost increases after feeding them a nutrient-rich feed with 22% high carbohydrate, and 65% high fish meal content and 50% crude protein level.
This high cost of farming and the difficulty in finding young eels in the wild goes a long way in explaining why the Japanese Eel can be so expensive.
So You've Caught An Eel, What Next?
Watching someone prepare the eel is one of the most amazing things. What you do is, you make a long incision along the eel and remove the single continuous bone in a smooth motion. Trust me, it's not as simple as it sounds as this skill takes years to fully master. Professionals select the eel that are extremely fresh and alive, and as you can imagine this makes handling a bit difficult. They remove the bones and cut eels to the proper size for the skewers.
When they've been properly skewered, Chefs have to constantly monitor each piece to ensure that it grills evenly. They steam, then grill each eel three times, dipping it into sauce between each grilling. Cooking methods such as kabayaki (eel broiled with sauce) and unagi donburi (bowl of rice topped with broiled eel) have been invented.
Remember when we said at the beginning of the video that eel blood was poisonous, it wasn't just for clickbait folks. Eel blood does contain something called “ichthyotoxin” which is deadly but can be eliminated by cooking, so don't worry, if you're eating cooked eel you're probably safe.
In 2014, The Japanese Ministry of the Environment has officially added Japanese eel to the “endangered” category of the country’s Red List of animals ranging from “threatened” to “extinct” with a 70 to 90 percent rate of decline over the last three generations.
So try this delicious food while it's still legally available, because it may not be around for much longer. 😆
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