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One Japanese website called “Sirabee”, challenged five people blindfolded to taste Japanese and Chinese eels.
As a result, neither the self-confident "eel connoisseur" nor the once-a-year eel-eater could accurately tell which was Japannese eel and which was Chinese eel.
Only one brother answered correctly, but his reason was that "The sauce of Chinese eel is not good"...
In other words, if you just taste the meat, you still don't get it.
Both Chinese and Japanese eels belong to anguilla japonica. In coastal areas of Zhejiang and Guangdong, it is more commonly known as "white eel".
The Japanese eel is a migratory fish that spends most of its life in freshwater rivers. But at a certain point in the fish's life, it obeys the DNA's call and migrates to the sea to mate, spawn and die there.
And not just any ocean, but in the middle of the Pacific Ocean near the Mariana Trench.
Yeah, the deepest place in the world.
It is only here that the Japanese eel lays its eggs and undergoes the metamorphosis of willow eel-glass eel-line eels into eels that can be eaten.
If you fish eel eggs and farm them, they don't hatch; If you fish out the young plants, they won't grow.
That's how squeamish you are.
Current laboratory techniques can barely produce baby eels, but the mortality rate is too high and the cost too high to make commercial sense.
What humans can do, therefore, is to go to the waters where the Japanese eel grows and catch the fry of glass eel or line eel, and raise them in fresh water and sell them.
In the process, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, China's Fujian and Guangdong provinces... It doesn't make any difference who gets it.
Japanese eels, Fujian eels and Cantonese eels are all Japanese eels from the Mariana Trench.
In terms of species alone, it's really the same thing, brothers and sisters of the same species in the Pacific.
Of course, variety is only one factor.
In addition to variety, the growing environment and cultivation method also affect the flavor of food ingredients.
At present, the global standard of Japanese eel is basically based on Japan.
It makes sense: Japan is the world's biggest eel eater, accounting for 70% of the 130,000 tons of eel consumed each year.
Eels have been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (EU) thanks to the efforts of food lovers. By comparison, the number of giant pandas in the wild has reached more than 1,800, and the conservation status has decreased to vulnerable (VU).
The Japanese eel has a higher risk of extinction than the panda.
However, the extinction does not delay the food greedy ah, Japanese people still covet the delicious eel.
Unfortunately, eel production in Japan has languished in recent years, with catches only one-tenth of what they were in the 1960s.
The price of local eels has also risen, leaving ordinary families unable to afford the fish.
That's when the Chinese eels arrive.
The older generation of Japanese think Chinese eels are big and meaty and of poor quality. Some people think Chinese food is not safe.
Size problem, from both sides of the understanding of quality is not
We Chinese generally believe that the bigger the eel, of course, the better. Some Chinese students choose large Chinese eels in the supermarket, but think the small eel is not worth buying.
But the Japanese like small.
As a food material, the seasonal nature of eels is obvious. Eels in summer and autumn are the most fat and delicious. In addition, eels weighing between 3 and 4 eels of 1 kg are not only fresh and tender, but also basically free of thorns.
Once overweight, they are known in the industry as "vegetable eels" (more than 500 grams per tail), with prickly wood and a reduced taste.
As a result, Chinese exporters strictly control the growth cycle of eels in order to get a good price in the Japanese market.
On the other hand, When it comes to food safety, China has made great progress and its local inspection system has gradually improved.
Eels exported to Japan are subject to stringent food safety laws to control drug residues.
Imposing strict standards on imports is annoying, of course, but it also forces domestic eel manufacturers to strictly check their own eel quality
China is now the world's largest eel farmer and exporter.
Chinese eels are big, tasty and cheap. Once exported, Chinese eels took up more than 55 percent of the Japanese market.
Some Japanese families are embracing the good, inexpensive eel: "It's cheap, and it's satisfying to eat it in big gulps."
The Chinese tradition of eating eel
There is also a tradition of eating eel in China. The documentary "The Story of Eel" filmed the cooking of "parietal eel" in Shunde:
The eel is cut to the bone and skin, added with salt and soy sauce, fried to remove the fishy shape, and then braised with the fried meat and garlic.
Take out the whole piece when the bone and meat are just separated, remove the bone and replace it with high-quality ham, then wrap the eel, roast meat, ham and tangerine peel in pig net oil and steam for half an hour.
The process is complicated, and when it comes out of the pot, the flavors blend and the aftertaste is long.
The most common way to eat eel in China is to make it into puyaki eel and sell it to fresh food websites and Japanese food stores.
In ancient times, the Japanese did not eat eel from the belly like today, but cut the eel into segments, put salt on them and roasted them with bamboo sticks. It looked like cattail, hence the name "puyaki".
Cattail eel, simple but not simple. Fresh eels are fixed to a chopping board with an awl and then cut from the back or abdomen to remove the bones and guts without damaging the flesh.
The meat is then heated at nearly 700 degrees Celsius to release excess fat, which is then colored and fired four times in a special soy sauce to give the fish a plump, rich, and distinctive amber color.
However, in the context of the "eel crisis", many businesses have taken the wrong idea, such as using some cheap substitutes to pass off the Japanese eel. More than low-grade Japanese stores, per capita more than 500 high-end Japanese stores, but also shoddy.
What's more, have you ever ordered an eel from a takeout platform that has more spines than a loach?
That's because it's not Japanese eel at all, but "eel flower" or "moray eel," which is characterized by light fat and light meat and is a far cry from eel.
The eel you buy online for 70 yuan a kilo is probably a flower eel or moray eel disguised as the Japanese eel.
Star eel, for example, is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine, but it can only be called "anago rice" rather than "eel rice" because of its oily and tender flesh.
Diners can't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese eels because they are almost the same in quality.
