Is it true that Americans don’t eat carps?

35 comments

1. If I remember correctly, a lot of the carp species here are invasive, and due to their diet, they don’t always taste great. So they get killed for being invasive, but they don’t get eaten after.

2. Now that you mention it it I don’t think I’ve ever had carp before. They’re very destructive where I live so they just kill them. No big deal really

3. [Here’s a really good run down of why we kill them.](https://www.cleanlakesalliance.org/lake-ecology/carp/)

4. Carp aren’t usually a fish that’s eaten in the US.

   Most carp species in the US are invasive. They aren’t native and are destructive to our ecosystem. I’d imagine from the places they’re found and type of diet they have they may taste foul.

5. This is not true for all of us.

   I was raised to think of Carp as a trash fish, but I have met a lot of people through the decades that consider Carp acceptable table fare.

   That said, I don’t recall anybody ever claiming Carp was the best table fare available in local waters. For instance, where I live we have Crappie and Channel Catfish both of which a Dee-lish… so I doubt I will ever even try Carp…okay, maybe just so I can say I did.

   If I were to guesstimate, I’d say around 75% of fishermen don’t eat Carp on the regular if at all.

6. In 40 years I can’t recall ever seeing them on a menu, so I guess we don’t.

7. I’ve never thought about it, but I guess not. Like, if I saw it on a menu at a restaurant, I wouldn’t be surprised or disgusted or anything, but now that I think about it I don’t think I ever *have* seen it on a menu.

8. We should start eating them to try to make them go extinct where they are currently invasive.

   In Indiana if you catch one you are supposed to kill it, by eating, using as cut bait or throwing in the trash. It’s illegal to posses one alive.

   https://youtu.be/qb3R3XMcGkM?si=yNmOQbLRAXkhcY2Y

9. Because salmon, tuna, trout, bass, tilapia, catfish, cod, and probably 20 other fish are already commonly eaten here.

10. [Illinois changed the name of Asian Carp to “Copi” to try to get more people to eat them.](https://wildlifemanagement.institute/outdoor-news-bulletin/august-2022/if-you-cant-beat-em-eat-em-illinois-rebrands-invasive-asian-carp)

11. The ones that live around here aren’t considered tasty. Above carp is catfish which can often taste like mud but is okay if you brine it a while to get the mud taste out. Bass and sunfish taste a lot better, but the best freshwater fish around are trout from the mountain rivers.

12. Its not a native fish and it tastes disgusting. In my area its illegal to catch and release carp. Every carp you pull out of the eco system is a net positive for the Eco System.

    Here is a brief history of them put out by the National Parks Service.

    https://www.nps.gov/miss/learn/nature/carphist.htm

13. True. A friend of mine was being forced to eat a carp and he chose to drive his car off a cliff.

    RIP Jeff

14. American Jews eat it (and I bet you’re from a country where a lot of American Jews have family origins). It’s used to make gefilte fish.

15. Comparing carp they eat in Asia to the common carp that live in the US is sort of like comparing a lion to a house cat. Sure they’re both felines, but a lion is a very different thing from a house cat. The carp that exist in North America are very different from the carp that are regularly eaten in Asia, and speaking from experience the common carp or sheepshead are absolutely not good eating….

16. Carp here is invasive and not tasty.

    Now lionfish, that’s another story. Open season, no limit, and a couple of our local seaside restaurants will buy em off you to make dip with( me, personally, ate it once, wasn’t a fan).

17. The US has access to both Atlantic and Pacific fisheries and is generally a wealthy nation.

    Carp aren’t more popular because people have more options and excess money to spend on premium fish.

    Most culinary traditions essentially come down to making the best possible food with the ingredients around you. This leads to people finding interesting ways of getting the most out of these ingredients.

    The US really doesn’t have a culinary tradition that stems from this dynamic or rather we abandoned it along the way.

    There are a lot of extremely popular “rustic” dishes from around the world that have just never caught on here in the US.

18. Not generally, they’re just not viewed as worth the effort and given their reputation as waste feeders many just…don’t like the concept.

    There are multiple invasive species of carp here, so catching and killing them is an ecological thing as opposed to catch and release for native species we don’t eat or sport fish.

19. I’ve ate it, caught it, killed them. They’re just bony as hell, hard to clean (I swear their scales will stop a bullet) and the meat is meh. There’s better fish to eat.

20. We kill them and turn them into catfood, usually.

21. They are invasive and destroy our local ecosystems. It’s actually against the law in most places to put them back in the water if you catch one.

    I tried one once because I caught it while cat fishing. It felt wasteful to just throw it in the trash or something. Whatever they eat here makes them taste terrible. It’s like if they tasted like mud that somehow went bad.

22. We’re encouraged to kill them because they’re invasive. There are much better freshwater fish to eat around here. Some people do eat them, but most don’t know how to properly prepare them.

23. It’s true. Carp a greasy and oily. They aren’t good and generally considered disposable. Best usecase I’ve seen for them is to bury them for garden fertalizer.

24. I grew up thinking it was a trash fish, but then my Laotian buddy invited me over for a family cookout and they had some. Wish I could remember what the recipe was called, but damnit it was delicious. Pretty much any Southeast Asian recipe will do though. I’ve had some good Vietnamese fish that would work excellent with it. Carp were originally imported to North America as a food source, same with the domestic pigeon, but then interest was lost in eating them and their population exploded.

25. I have been told they are a pain to butcher and don’t provide a sizable filet relative to other fish in the lake/river. So yes, most of them end up on the banks or throw to the dogs. Also [but have you seen the problem](https://youtu.be/RJRRmy6KOnE?si=So0UGGxnylr2w83h)

26. Carp is among one of the worst tasting (and consistency) fish one could ever eat. Its bony, gelatinous, bitter (mostly due to being a garbage fish and the diet that goes along with that, ironically catfish can taste great, weird), gross.

27. Carp is like eating your pillow to me. Now give me a mess of Bream, Crappie or Catfish & I’m in Heaven.

28. I’ve never tried it, but have heard they’re not “good eating.”

29. No, Americans don’t really eat carp. They are considered an invasive species. I’ve heard they are bony and don’t taste good. So it’s just not something we dig. I’ve never tried it but with so many other good fish out there, it doesn’t seem like I’m missing anything. I’d try it if someone gave it to me. They are seen more as an ornamental fish.

30. I’ve tried carp a couple of times and every time they are not very tasty. It’s just as easy to catch good tasting fish, especially in areas where carp are to begin with.

31. Mediocre angler and sometimes fishing guide here…

    Carp are rarely eaten in the US. There are so many better options that taste better and are easier to clean.

    A lot of Americans won’t even eat bass or pike for the same reasons, and both of those are much more appealing.

    Asian Carp are an invasive species and are becoming a massive problem in many areas and are rightfully hated.

32. I work in aquaculture, so I know a bit about this.

    Carp is not widely eaten in the USA, although it _is_ sold in some Asian food markets (incidentally, live largemouth bass are also quite popular, which is something I learned recently).

    Contrary to most of the comments here, I doubt carp actually taste any different in the USA than they do in other parts of the world. They don’t eat a really different sort of diet, although their feeding habits _are_ more destructive here because our habitats are not adapted to their presence.

    Instead, I think it’s mostly about the bones. Americans eat fish, but few of the species we commonly eat have bones in the fillets. American consumers don’t want bones in their fish, and carp fillets have bones.

    You can add on to this some cultural taste preferences, people don’t eat a lot of carp so they aren’t used to it so they don’t like it. But few Americans have ever eaten it at all and so it’s not like they have personal experience with the flavor and dislike it, it’s just not an animal classed as “food”.

    Probably part of this is because it’s not found here natively so it’s not a part of food culture, which makes it all the more ironic that carp were introduced all over the damn place in the hopes that they would become a food fish, and now almost nobody eats them and they just cause trouble. We have a lot of nice tasting native freshwater fish, so that’s what people tend to eat in terms of locally caught fish.

    I don’t think it’s the “bottom feeder” aspect because people in the US eat a lot of catfish and marine groundfishes.

33. Carp is not native to the US and they are very aggressively invasive, so they are threatening our native species. On top of that, they are bottom feeders, so except in the cleanest waters, they are sometimes too toxic to eat.

    We just want to eradicate them as much as possible. And that’s a good goal.

34. They are invasive and kill local species of fish. If you catch a carp you are supposed to beach it.

35. My grandfather always said this on how to prepare carp for consumption:

    !. Catch a carp.

    2. cut the head off, gut it, de-scale it, etc. like you would with any other fish.

    3. Place carp fillets on a piece of cherry wood.

    4. Place in oven for however long and at whatever temperature you’d cook a fish filet of that size.

    5. When done, throw the fish away and eat the wood, because that’s what the fish is going to taste like.