Carp in a Wok

For years now I've been wondering why America is just ignoring 2,000 years of Chinese recipes with carp.  I've found dozens of innovative recipes from carp taco to carp hot dogs, but nothing beats a traditional whole fish recipe.  In fact, why try to debone carp when we all know that the y-bones are infamously hard to get around?

Outside of sushi, most fish are served with bones in both Japan and China.  It's customary to simply eat around the bones because it helps you learn chopsticks.  Okay maybe that's the problem with America.  We just don't know how to use chopsticks.

That's changing a lot these days due to the influx of sushi and the influx of culinary shows.  If you ask me, we should return to whole fish dinners in America.  It wasn't long ago when fisherman and beach goers would take a whole fish and cook it over a camp fire.  And they pick the bones to eat the freshest fish.

Sure, it's a stretch to incorporate this with carp in America because we rarely eat things like salmon or cod whole anymore.  If we could simply offer more fish whole in the grocery stores, I'm sure more people would venture into cooking it whole

Online, I was able to finally find some traditional carp recipes.  Guess what?  You don't have to worry about bones because everybody will expect them to have it in this method.

Just take the cleaned carp and fry in a wok.  You see, the wok was designed for this.   You don't need a lot of oil because unlike your deep fried fish sticks, this is more about slowly pan frying the fish to get the inside done with a crispy skin on the outside.  

Chinese have perfect this style cooking for over 2,000 years and we are basically trying to reinvent the wheel in America.  Eat carp yes, but eat it whole.  That's the way it was intended to be eaten.  We lack two categories for fish in America.  The processed fish stick stuff and bone fish.   Bone fish meaning it's sold fresh whole.

The funny part is that the constant joking about carp being garbage fish has made me shake my head about just how far removed rural America is to the world.  Carp, when cooked in a wok just comes out delicious.  And carp in a wok, although sounds difficult, is actually the easiest way to cook fish.

The thing about this is that you can do with with the most expensive fish like red snapper and even wild salmon, but you can also do it with cheap fish like tilapia, bass, and even carp.