Recipes

Fried Panfish Roe (Jeff's)

Fish · Offal · Quick & Easy · Seafood · Wild and Foraged Foods

Fried Panfish Roe (Jeff's)
Prep 5 min
Cook 6 min
Serves 2
Level Easy

Bluegill, sunfish and the other panfish carry small skeins of roe in season, and this is how I cook them: rolled in a little flour and fried in butter with salt and pepper. It is simple, fast, and one of my favourite things to come out of a mess of panfish.

Ingredients

  • Roe skeins from a mess of panfish (bluegill, sunfish, perch, crappie)

About 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

  • 2 to 3 tablespoons butter
  • Salt and black pepper

Directions

  1. Clean the roe. Rinse the skeins gently in cold water, pull off any blood vessels or bits of gut, and pat them dry with a paper towel. Leave each skein whole.
  2. Flour it. Put the flour on a plate and roll each skein in it until lightly coated. Shake off the excess.
  3. Fry. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat until it foams. Lay in the roe and fry gently until golden on the bottom, then turn and brown the other side. Small panfish skeins take only a few minutes; the eggs should turn opaque all the way through. Keep the heat moderate — roe spits if the pan is too hot.
  4. Season and serve. Salt and pepper while hot, and eat right away.

Notes

What this is This is my method, not a measured recipe; the quantities above are a starting point for the roe from a typical mess of panfish.

Borrowed tricks Hank Shaw brines larger sac roes (shad, herring) in 2 tablespoons kosher salt to a pint of water for an hour or two before flouring, which seasons them through; the same works on bigger panfish skeins. He also warns that roe that has been frozen “loses its texture and gets fishy,” so cook it fresh.

Michigan fish eggs — read this Michigan’s Eat Safe Fish guides test fillets only, and say: “The organs and head are not tested for the ESF Guide. Internal organs (liver, fish eggs, etc.) typically have higher levels of chemicals than the filet and shouldn’t be eaten.” PCBs and dioxins are stored in fat and organs. The guide publishes no measurements for roe, so this is a precaution rather than a finding about any particular lake, and it applies to panfish, salmon and steelhead roe alike.

Never eat gar roe Gar eggs contain a toxin that cooking does not destroy; even cooked gar roe causes severe illness. Longnose gar live in Michigan waters.

The Offal dive on the Food site covers this part in depth.

The photo The photo shows fried fish roe skeins, not panfish roe specifically.