NEWS

Carp for eating? Free cook-off lets Peoria-area residents taste test

Leslie Renken
lrenken@pjstar.com
Lyuba Korsun, left, and her husband, Olex, confer over the taste of an Asian carp sandwich offered Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020 at the Levee District in East Peoria, one of two Tri-County locations, including Kelleher's in Peoria, promoting Asian carp as a culinary option. The Asian Carp Cookout was sponsored at multiple locations around the state by Illinois Department of Natural Resources Midwest Fish Co-op and Sorce Freshwater Company.

EAST PEORIA — Abundant, local, cheap and a great source of protein and other essential nutrients, carp have only one problem: Americans have traditionally shied away from eating it, until now.

On Saturday, people came out to attend an Asian carp cook-off promoted by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources at nine locations around the state, from Chicago to Carbondale. Events in both Peoria and East Peoria were a hit, in spite of the blustery weather.

“We didn’t have any left over,” said long-time food distributor Roy Sorce, owner of the newly formed Sorce Freshwater Company. “We planned just right. We had well over 200 to 300 people.”

Visitors to the East Peoria location, which was set up in the Target parking lot, got to try an Asian-inspired slider, a recipe created by Thanh Linh chef Pat Luong. Outside Kelleher’s in Peoria, visitors got to try three different recipes: a cruncher, a crab-like cake and a slider. Local chefs created their own recipes at all nine locations of the event.

“My mom was a Depression cook, she taught me how to cook carp,” said Pat Sullivan, owner’s of Kelleher’s. “But this is a white, sweet carp — this is not like the carp we had as kids. It’s white sweet meat and it’s shocking everybody.”

The carp used in the event Saturday were caught Oct. 13 by members of the newly formed Midwest Fishing Co-op in the Peoria pool of the Illinois River, which extends from Bartonville all the way up to Ottawa, said Sorce. The fish were gutted in Peoria, then sent to a factory in northern Illinois where they underwent special processing to make the fish edible without removing the hundreds of tiny bones in each fish.

“Carp are very bone-y,” said Sorce. “It would take an extreme amount of hours to de-bone these fish, and it’s nothing a machine can do.”

Cubed fish was given to chefs at the nine locations. It’s perfect for recipes that require flaked fish.

The event was the first of several planned by Sorce Freshwater Company and the IDNR to help people embrace carp as an eating fish. Outside the Tri-County Area, event locations included restaurants, parks, community event spaces and university dining halls in Chicago, Quincy, Springfield, Urbana, Carbondale and Carterville. Meals were given free of charge with help from Midwest Fish Co-op and Sorce Freshwater Company.

As a food distributor who has recently gotten into carp in a big way, Sorce is trying to increase demand for his product, and he has some help. The IDNR is all for finding ways to remove more Asian carp from the Illinois River.

“An invasive species, Asian carp are abundant in Illinois and, while we’ve long worked with commercial fishermen and other partners to remove these fish from our waterways, we know more can and must be done,” said Colleen Callahan, director of IDNR. “To that end we thought, ‘Why not acknowledge them as a protein source and add them to menus across the state?’ They’re an extremely healthy and mild-flavored fish which can be locally sourced. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

The events in Chicago were well-publicized and already several restaurants are offering to keep the momentum going by serving Asian carp in the near future. Locally, Kelleher’s may have a couple items on their menu soon, said Sullivan.

Sorce sees a great opportunity in carp. He has applied for a grant to build a carp processing facility in East Peoria so fish don’t have to be driven upstate for processing. The endeavor could create jobs, feed the community and help the environment by removing invasive fish from the Illinois River.

“If we can reduce the numbers of fish in the river by 15 million pounds of these fish a year, which is very doable, and process them into a human consumption product — and hopefully we will have a consumer that will buy that product, whether it be retail, or department of corrections or public schools — that will put less pressure on the dam north of here which then helps reduce the threat of them getting into the great lakes,” he said. “We are the last line of defense before they reach the Great Lakes.”

Leslie Renken can be reached at 270-8503 or lrenken@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter.com/LeslieRenken, and subscribe to her on Facebook.com/leslie.renken.

Patrick Luong lifts a stack of Asian carp burgers from the grill during the Asian Carp Cookout Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020 in East Peoria. The event is one of two, including Kelleher's in Peoria, in the Tri-County area that were part of a statewide effort by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to promote Asian carp as an edible choice. Luong is a chef at Than Linh in Peoria.