If you’re a Washington Island regular, you know that for many years now we’ve been unable to get smoked chubs at Charlie’s Smokehouse in Gill’s Rock. Long ago, when the ferry departed from Gill’s rock, we would go to the smokehouse and buy boxes of smoked chubs while waiting in line for the next ferry. They came in three sizes then and I remember pondering whether to buy small for 60 cents a pound, medium for 70 cents a pound, or large for 80 cents a pound. It was great to procure a 5-lb box and take it along to the Island for our first meal of the vacation.
Unfortunately, for years now we’ve only been able to buy smoked trout, white fish, and salmon. They’re good, of course, but not as good as chubs. So, what’s up? Are chubs now an endangered species? Not being a fishologist, I hired an experienced researcher from the University of Wisconsin to tackle this question. He and his crack research team studied this matter for many weeks. In fact, I feared they would soon be requesting additional funding! But yesterday we received the good news: smoked chubs have been discovered in Metcalfe’s Market in Madison.
With that mystery solved we turned to the more important question: Do they taste as good as they did long ago? We knew we couldn’t rely on outside researchers to answer this critical question so we ran our own taste tests.
The photos above show the package as it was found at Metcalfe’s. The chubs are no longer sold in three sizes nor are they priced at 60, 70, or 80 cents a pound. They come in one size that sells for $13.99 a pound. I bought the largest package to increase the meat to skin-bones-head-tail ratio. Note the excellent golden color of the skin. The beer bottles were added to illustrate the size.
One of our professional tasters carefully pulled the meat from the bones and used it to prepare a sandwich. The other taster ate the meat and bread separately. Both used the same type of beer to refresh their palates between servings.
Note the look of satisfaction on the face of this anonymous taster. Words are not really needed to describe the results. The chubs are softer and have more omega-3 containing oils than other fish. They also have a stronger smoked flavor and are a bit saltier than the others as well. Smoked chubs versus other smoked fish is rather like Guinness versus Coors Light. When you’re done you can even have fun by using the remains to build a meatless fish!
Some people claim that eating smoked chubs is slow and tedious because you have to remove the head and tail and skin and carefully peel the meat from the bones. The cognoscenti know, however, that with practice you can learn to eat smoked fish with very little effort. But, that’s like running a track meet in the Louvre. Speed’s not the thing here so take your time and savor the flavor.