High School Chefs Tackle Flying Fish At Indian Hills Competition

OTTUMWA - It’s a fish that created buzz when videos appeared showing them flying out of the water when startled by a motor boat in an Illinois river, but will it have that same buzz when it appears on a menu? 

Silver carp, the invasive species expanding its reach in rivers in and around Iowa, will be the featured ingredient at Indian Hills Community College (IHCC) Culinary Arts Department’s cooking completion based on the Food Network’s Iron Chef America television show on Oct. 17. 

Chef and program chair Gordon Rader has built IHCC’s Culinary Arts Department into a nationally recognized, award winning program. He has held this competition twice each year for the past seven years as a way to attract high school students who are serious about a career in the culinary arts. 

High school teams from Burlington, Mediapolis, Fort Madison, Ottumwa, Eddyville-Blakesburg, Cardinal and Mount Pleasant will compete for scholarship money to attend IHCC’s Culinary Arts program. The six person teams and their teachers will demonstrate their skills in the on-campus studio in front of about 75 friends and family from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The competition follows a similar format to the television show – contestants are judged on their kitchen skills, service and taste. Chef Rader intentionally creates a stressful environment giving students a real world scenario then see how they react.

In the TV show, the chefs do not know the secret ingredient. For this competition, Rader provided teams with it ahead of time because the fish are difficult to work with due to their boney structure. 

The Iowa DNR collected silver carp for the competition. 

“I’m interested to see what these high school students can do with it,” Rader said. “It’s an enjoyable fish to eat. The students said that it tasted better than tuna.” 

These fish have white flesh with a mild flavor unlike its cousin the common carp that feeds on the bottom and has a strong fish taste. 

“These fish taste more long the lines of our panfish or catfish. The only issue is the amount of bones and it takes some practice to clean one,” said Joe Larscheid, chief of Fisheries for the Iowa DNR. “This is a resource that can be exploited.  These are non native fish that are here and we want people to use them. What we don’t want is for these fish to expand into new areas because they can negatively impact existing fish populations.”

Silver and bighead carp are an invasive species from Asia that were imported to commercial catfish farms in the south as a way to maintain their ponds in the 1970s. By 1980, the fish were found outside of those facilities, in natural waters. These carp feed by filtering water over their gill rakers that trap microscopic organisms that compete for food directly with native aquatic species. They can grow from 50 pounds to more than 100 pounds.