From VOICES: Foodways by Lynn Case Ekfelt

Volume 32
Fall Winter
2006

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If you’ve ever seen a bullhead, you’ll wonder how anything so ugly can possibly taste so good. Members of the catfish family, they have wide, flat heads with prominent whiskers and thick skin instead of scales.

Lynn Case Ekfelt is retired from her position as a special collections librarian and university archivist at St. Lawrence University. She is the author of Good Food Served Right: Traditional Recipes and Food Customs from New York’s North Country (Canton, New York: Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, 2000), available on-line from our New York Traditions gallery store.

New York Folklore Society
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The North Country Bullhead Feed by Lynn Case Ekfelt

Forget about robins and crocuses. In the North Country you know it’s spring when the newspaper begins to carry ads for bullhead feeds at VFW posts, volunteer fire companies, and sportsmen’s clubs. These dinners are so ubiquitous that it seems as if there couldn’t possibly be any bullhead left in the streams after the end of May. The secret? Most local organizations buy their bullhead from Canadian fish farms. State regulations say that the fish must be alive when they cross the border, so middlemen along the Saint Lawrence clean them and sell the cleaned fish in bags. No, the sponsoring groups are not too lazy to catch their own fish—although the size of many feeds would make that a full-time job for their members. The problem is trematodes, little parasites that are basically harmless, but quite unappetizing to find in your supper. The farm-raised fish are free of these parasites as well as any pollutants which the bottomfeeding bullhead might ingest from local waterways.

If you’ve ever seen a bullhead, you’ll wonder how anything so ugly can possibly taste so good. Members of the catfish family, they have wide, flat heads with prominent whiskers and thick skin instead of scales. There is no designated season for bullhead fishing and no limit on how many you can bring home. Local bullheading experts tell me, however, that the best time to catch your own bullhead is in the early spring, and the best time of day to fish for them is after dark. You take a lantern or the makings of a fire, a carton of worms or a pail of minnows, something to sit on, a few beers, and a friend or two, and suddenly the fishing is a social event, as well as a way to provide dinner for the family. By confining your fishing to the early spring, you can avoid the trematodes and the muddy taste of bullhead caught later in the season. Once you’ve caught your fish, you clean it differently than a trout or bass. Rather than filleting it, you simply cut off the head, remove the insides and skin it. Then you fry the remainder whole and enjoy. Wanting to savor the sweet bullhead meat without fighting the mosquitoes, we decided to drive over to South Colton for the Racquette Valley Fish and Game Club’s twentieth annual bullhead feed. We got there at about two fifteen for a meal advertised as running from “2:00 p.m. until all are served.” The room was already filled with contented customers at long, paper-covered tables, plates piled high with coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans, pasta salad, rolls, and two or three crisp, golden-brown bullhead. Many had already chosen their desserts from the well-stocked table by the kitchen; I grabbed the last piece of blackberry pie to round off my feast.

After twenty years, the club has their preparations down to a science. The women come over the day before to make salads; the men arrive at ten the day of the feed to start heating the oil in two different pots. (By using separate pots for large and small fish, they can ensure that all the fish from a given pot will be ready to take out at the same time.) During the meal, two men sort the five hundred pounds of fish by size; two dip the fish into a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper before dropping them into the bubbling oil; and one keeps an eye on the cooking fish. It’s a congenial group— hard-working, but still managing to catch up on local gossip and tell jokes. (Actually, I didn’t get to hear the joke. Just as I arrived one of the workers looked up and said “Uh-oh. Lady!” and the raconteur broke off in mid-sentence. Chivalry lives in South Colton.) There isn’t much time for relaxing, though, when you’re expecting four hundred guests for dinner.

Although the feed is a fundraiser for the Racquette Valley Fish and Game Club, it is also very much a community event. Many local women who are not members of the club generously contribute pies, cakes, salads, and baked beans to the event, probably well aware that the club members will reciprocate when the ladies hold church suppers or bake sales for their organizations. Fried bullhead may be tender, but they provide good cement to hold together a small community.

Deep-Fried Northern Bullhead

This recipe, used by Dads Post 80 of the Gouverneur VFW at their bullhead feed, is slightly more complicated than the Racquette Valley Fish and Game Club’s flour coating.

1 cup fine cornmeal
1 cup Italian-seasoned bread crumbs
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lemon pepper
2 pounds cleaned bullhead
1 quart water
Canola oil for frying

Heat the oil to 375 degrees. Combine the cornmeal, crumbs, salt, and lemon pepper in a shallow pan. Place the cleaned fish in a pan of water, splitting them in half if they are large. Drain them. While they are still moist, roll them in the crumb mixture until they are completely covered, then shake off the excess coating and gently drop them into the oil. Cook the fish until they are golden brown, approximately four to eight minutes, depending on their size. They are done when the meat is white, with no blood showing.

Lynn Case Ekfelt’s Foodways column was published in Voices Vol. 32, Fall Winter 2006. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society now.