Eating Northern Pike

[Hodgey1]

I caught a dandy of a Northern while at Kipawa last week. We tried to be gentle and return to the water, but the fish kept going belly up. I am not a waster of any game ever, so we retrieved, put on the stringer and fileted at camp, froze and brought home.

I've watched a few video on removing the Y bones from the filet, but I'm wondering, should I try eating it traditionaly "lightly floured and pan fried" or should I think outside the box and possibly pickle it with some onions or maybe smoke it, like I do steel head trout here at home. Any thoughts, comments, recipes or suggestions are appreciated!

Hodgey1

[smitty55]

I like your first suggestion best, pan fried. Crushed potato chips make for a nice crunchy coating if you want to try something different.
As for smoking, that usually requires fish with a higher fat content like trout, salmon and whitefish. Light, white fleshed fish like pike, pickerel, bass, perch etc generally don't do near as well in the smoker.

Cheers

[Oarin]

How did you fillet it? Pike can be boneless is filleted in 5 pieces. If you did it that way pike is delicious breaded and fried. I think there was a thread about filleting a pike a while back.

[Hodgey1]

How did you fillet it? Pike can be boneless is filleted in 5 pieces.

Having never properly filleted a Pike, I took to doing it like a Walleye. I watched a YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkamOetxH7o that shows filleting it the way I have already done and then removing the Y bones. I think if I can get the Y bones out after thawing it, I will try cooking it like I normally do, by pan frying, since you all are saying its good eating?

[NortonJoe]

Remove the Y-bones and fry it up!  The other choice is to oven  bake it...put a little oil in the bottom of a pan lay in the fish, season ( I use a bit of Cajun seasoning, salt and pepper) and bake at 350 degrees, mmmmmmm.  (Remember you must have your favorite beverage to make it count!)

[fishtildark]

Hey Hodgey1,
My one fishing buddy performed Y bone surgery pretty well but
I was never too good at getting the y bones out. so I took to a new method someone showed me which basically takes the back off instead of the sides. Havent done that much because I feel like I am wasting fish. too late for that on yours anyway but if you can get them out, even if you end up with a few pieces, I opt for beer batter or pan fry. I do know one thing ...while they taste pretty good the same day they are caught out of the cold lake water, they don't travel as well as Walleyes. so I would eat it sooner rather than later.. also, expect it to look a little yellow if its frozen a while. FTD

[Jay Thomas]

Eating northern pike out of good cold water (and Kipawa has plenty of that) can be very tasty. Indeed, in a blind taste test I read about, some preferred the northern pike over the walleye when cooked identically.

Jay

[fishtildark]

Jay, I agree totally. We have had trips that we cooked both together on the day caught and very difficult to tell them apart... dog gone, now I am getting hungry for freshly caught fish..

[SgtCrabby]

I have lightly smoked pike (alderwood) and liked it.
Pickled with onions sounds very good!
It can be baked as well.

Or the good tried and true: fry it.
Pretty much any way you like to cook fish will work.  And the flavor is very similar to walleye.
Enjoy!

[Kill Switch]

Fried it great. Or, boil a large pot of water with one cup of sugar. Cut the pike into little chunks. Place pike in the boiling water and cook until flaky.
You can season the water with salt as well.
Melt garlic butter.
Strain the fish and dip or drizzle in the garlic butter. Poor man's lobster. Delicious.
5 more sleeps......

[JLG]

agree w/289walleye on boiling it till flaky (bones than pick out easy) and melt butter for it and eat on crackers.  We never used sugar in the water but did use salt and old bay and also use Cajun spice and or old bay in the butter to spice it up a bit

[Hodgey1]

The eating Pike like lobster, with butter sounds very interesting and tasty. Would steaming it get the same outcome, or is boiling the proper way to do it?

[Hodgey1]

I just did a google search and came up with this interesting spin on the concept, butter poaching. The same concept, just using butter instead of water. I'm going to try it and report back.

https://honest-food.net/butter-poached-fish/

[NortonJoe]

This thread is making me hungry...

[SgtCrabby]

Butter poaching?  Now that sounds real tasty.

I'm getting real hungry now too.