We have a lot of excellent seafood in Maryland but it is different from the seafood in other parts of the country, like the Great Lakes region. The fish I ate growing up were freshwater fish like walleye, bass, perch, and trout. In the Atlantic region, you go from shellfish like lobster (Maine) to crab and oysters (Maryland), and other salt-water fish. One little fish that I haven’t seen since moving to Maryland is smelt. We asked about it at our fish market and they said we could special order it in ten-pound buckets. I don’t have a separate freezer so that’s nine pounds more than I need.
Smelt are cheap and fun to eat. A one-pound bag is between $5-$7 and enough for four people with sides dishes. Wild Great Lakes smelt competes with the native fish populations so it’s a good fish alternative. Smelt from the Canadian rivers is only permitted in First Nation communities because it’s endangered. Smelt is high in omega-3s and low in mercury.
After talking about how I missed smelt for about six months, finally when we drove up to Michigan for Thanksgiving, I got my smelt – not quite what I expected. I was at my Uncle’s dentist office, and Tony went to inquire about buying smelt from a special local market, Vince and Joe’s. He texted a picture of the package to me to make sure it was what I wanted, but I was at the dentist and not paying attention to the phone. After my uncle checked out my teeth, we went to the cemetery to visit my grandparents and I didn’t see the text until later. It turns out the smelt were from Peru, and Tony didn’t want to go through all this trouble and get one bag, so he bought six.
We packed the Peruvian smelt in in a couple of my dad’s beer coolers to drive them home and put them in the freezer. They’re a bit larger than the smelt I was expecting. Usually you fry smelt (which have been cleaned by removing the heads and guts) and eat them whole. The backbone is still in, but after it’s fried it cooks to nothing and you don’t even notice it – except in large Peruvian smelt. I was the only person in the family that had eaten smelt before and the others were not comfortable with eating the bones.
I made two pounds of smelt because I was trying to use them up, and I double breaded them to disguise them a bit for the first-timers. You can simply coat them in flour and put them in the hot oil to fry. By the way, I was not able to find the sustainability or mercury information for Peruvian smelt; it may depend on the region where it was fished.
Smelt
1/4 – 1/2 C avocado oil
1-lb smelt
1/2 C flour
1/2 C bread crumbs
1 t paprika
1/2 t salt
2 eggs
1 T milk
Heat 1/4 cup oil in a large pan over medium high heat. Rinse the smelt and pat them dry with a paper towel. Coat them with the dry ingredient mixture. Dip in the beaten egg and milk mixture. Dredge with the four/bread crumb mixture and add to the pan. When browned on one side, flip and brown the other side – it takes a few minutes per side. Add more oil if the pan looks dry before they are all evenly browned. Set on paper towel as you remove them from the oil with tongs.
