Originally Posted by tunaless

What a site! you find out there are others that have equal or worst mental issues. I went thru that "eat whatever you catch" phase(20 yrs ago). The process was fry it first (everything taste good friend), if it was good, then cook it in a spicy italien spaggetti sauce, if it was still good, then try it raw or slightly coked with butter and garlic. Mantis shrimp were a disappointment, but there were some success. Quarter decks were good, small skimmer clams fresh were great if you cut out the belly. Big spearing (we used to have a big spring run where they spawned in the newly growing eel grass and marsh grass) these suckers were the size of big smelt, so you could gut them to reduce the gross factor. Spider crab=failure, smooth dogfish, skate wings, sea robins =winner.

Now, onto my beloved winkles, aka whelk. I potted them for about 5 yrs, and with the exception of going to bed every night thinking I was going to wipe the horseshoe crab out of existence, I loved it because the catch rate was much better then in lobstering (sometimes you would get 25 per pot).
The good news is that they are curtailing the horseshoe crab take.

The important part.....eating them!

item 1: Eat the right whelk! there are 2 types, channel and horned whelk. Channel whelks taste better! Channel are the smooth ones that have like a burlap cover to the shell. horned whelk are like they are names, with knobs on the fattest part of shell.

item 2: fillet and slice thin. very tough to describe, but when you clean them, you want just the good meat. so clean the "guts" out, and if you boiled, taste the piece that has holds the "security door", as it is the toughest part.

item 3: on the thinness thing, we used a deli slicer. We would load it with 3-4 meats the, make them paper thin.


item 4: pre taste. 1 out 5 or so whelks taste like crap. Don;t ask me why, but for some reason, some of them just taste and smell like el crapo. try to get them out of the mix as fast as possible.


item 5. MArinate! we would make them in a conch salad and wait 24-36 hours before we would eat it.


I'm salivating as I type. each time I head to Montauk, I take the big pot and boil a dozen to bring back north. in the fall, I freeze up a bushel and they are killer with fra dialvla sauce.