Can you eat dogfish or carpet shark?

[troutfishernz]

just wondering if you can eat dogfish or carpet shark? Ive heard that dogfish contian a lot of ammonia and that the fillets need to be soaked in fresh water not sure about carpet shark though

[Miliwolf]

Yeah, most fish can be eaten…

Dogfish has very white fillets which lack flavor. They were marketed as snow fish for a while in stores. Never tried, nor know anyone who eaten carpet shark. But it does not look appealing.

[troutfishernz]

Thanks for that info Miliwolf. I once saw someone take the fillets of a carpet shark at Timaru and they didnot look flash they had a big red strip running down the fillet.

[yellowfin]

yea im sure you can eat them not too sure how they would taste though and dont really want to try

[troutfishernz]

Tried Dogfish fillets today for the first Time,There ok but have little flavour and bad texture Wouldnt bother with them again.

[yellowfin]

Shark’s blood contains urea, which breaks down to ammonia after it dies. For this reason it is essential to bleed sharks you intend to eat immediately after capture. Spiny dogfish is very good to eat. I have eaten plenty of them over the years. Most of us will have eaten dogfish unwittingly as it is often sold as fish and chips.
It is a dense meat and is little affected by freezing. I always freeze it even if I am going to eat it the next day as this firms the flesh.
A good way to cook it is in a casserole dish in the oven. Buy a few hundred grams of frozen smoked hoki or cod from the supermarket. Cut it up in pieces about 2 inches long and place in the dish. Do the same with 3 or 4 times the amount of spiny dogfish fillets. Add knobs of butter, pepper, parsley, and a bottle of cream. Bake in the oven until done. When all cooked together the mild smoked flavour goes through the dogfish and you can’t tell which fish is which. You can add mullet, kahawai, blue cod and so on if you wish.
You can also batter dogfish or cover in bread crumbs. Either way it is best to freeze it first.
Very tasty!

[yellowfin]

still dont know if i can bring myself to eat it, i never buy normal fish at fish and chip shop i always get the blue cod or gurnard

[troutfishernz]

Thanks for that info Yellowfin.
I did bleed the dogfish like I do with all fish I catch then cooked it within a few hours of being cought. I also soaked the fillets in water before cooking as I was told that gets rid of the ammonia? The taste was ok but the texture is what put me off. I might try it again but put it in the freezer for a few days.

[yellowfin]

Milk is meant to be good to soak fillets in, And i hope it was sea/salt water you soaked them in as fresh can ruin fish

[troutfishernz]

I soaked the fillets in water from the tap but added some sea salt.
Surprising how little meat you get off Dogfish. the one I filleted was around 2.5-3kg only got a couple of small fillets off it.

[yellowfin]

If you gut your dogfish straight away you sould not get any ammonia smell at all. Fillet and bag your dogfish, or any fish for that matter, without washing it. I repeat don’t wash the fillets in saltwater or freshwater. Just bag it as is. If the shark has not been cleaned straight away after capture, soaking the flesh in fresh water will only remore a little of the ammonia smell. It will not work if there is a strong smell of ammonia. I would also add that you should remove the red muscle from the fillets as this will be stronger flavoured.
According to the late David H. Graham, in [i:dpywlgo3]A Treasury of New Zealand Fishes[/i:dpywlgo3] Canada and the United States carried on large scale fisheries and canneries for utilising dogfish where it was sold as greyfish. So it is perfectly OK to eat.

[gunnercoops]

cooked dogfish last year, I was not overly keen, my mate liked it though. Skinning the buggers was a pain…any tips on that would help me try them again.

[yellowfin]

I don’t waste time filleting fish at the beach – unless I am going to be there all day or longer. Instead I head and gut them as I find it easier to fillet them later at home over the kitchen bench. After dispatching with a blow to the head, take the spiny dogfish by each pectoral fin and make a deep angled cut from the base of the pectoral fin back towards the head. Then slide the knife up the rear vent to the head while pulling a pectoral fin. With a bit of practice as you slice the head off the guts and both pectoral fins will be removed in one go. This also bleeds the shark and leaves you with a smaller tidy package.

Back at home I place the shark on the bench top with one side facing upwards. Run a sharp fillet knife along the top of the back bone from the head end to the tail. Flip it over and take the other side off in the same manner. Finally lay the fillet skin side down on the bench. Make a cut an inch or so downwards on an angle from the tail end. Grasp this piece of the skin at the tail end and slide your knife along the skin to the other end to remove the clean fillet. As you do so keep the blade flat against the skin pressing it down onto the bench pulling the skin at the same time. This process can be performed very quickly with a bit of practice.

[yellowfin]

i may feed dogfish to my no wait i proberbly would even feed it to my cat or any animal other than bait or berley, Sa a fishing show the other day may have been extreme fishing with robson green and they caught the bloody things there too in america and they all over eurpoe as well

[gunnercoops]

cheers Yellowfin, you make it sound easy! Yep doggie sold in Uk fish n chip shops as Rock Salmon…nice bit of marketing eh!

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