Recently I saw some canned eels for sale in a Wegman's near Rochester, and picked them up. I've been eating eels for years, so I assumed I'd already done a post about them. However, I haven't, so here we are.
Eels are actually a type of fish. Which seems odd, as they don't resemble a typical fish in a lot of ways. But they're just a variant of fish with elongated bodies, and no pelvic fins, and sometimes no pectoral fins. "Eel" is kind of a catch all term for various other long, snake-like aquatic creatures which aren't true eels, such as the electric eels, and deep sea spiny eels. Real eels adult body lengths range from a small of 5 cm. (about 2 inches) to a large of 4 meters (about 13 feet). Weight-wise, the largest eels can be up to 110 kilos (240 pounds). Their life cycle has only been fully understood fairly recently. For much of recorded history, there were many theories about how they reproduced, some pretty strange. For example, in ancient times some noted naturalists thought they came from worms made of mud, or sprang up from dew that formed in May and June, or propagated by rubbing against rocks. Their reproductive organs weren't even conclusively discovered until 1897! Anyway, some of them are like salmon in reverse, in that they begin their lives in the ocean, move into fresh water rivers and lakes, and then return to the ocean to spawn. Others spend their entire lives in the ocean. Whatever kind of water they live in, they tend to like shallow water, and often burrow in rocks and sand. Unlike many species of fish, they are capable of swimming backwards.
Most of the eels I've eaten were at Japanese and Chinese restaurants, as sushi. As far as I can recall, I've only had the freshwater kind, called "unagi," and not the salt water "anago." Unagi is simply delicious. It's a cooked sushi, and appears mostly brownish. I essentially like eating every kind of water-dwelling creature, but even with that in mind unagi is one of the best ones. It's not just me, either--of my sushi-eating friends it's one of the most popular kinds as well. But the recent canned variety I got was different. This was from a Taiwanese company called Tong Yeng. These eels were listed as being conger eels, which means they were probably a species of salt water eels, one of the larger kinds. They weren't as good as the fresh water eels. They had an odd sweetish flavor to them, which may have been from the spices and/or soy sauce they were packed in. They weren't terrible, and I could finish them, but they were a huge disappointment when compared to the unagi. Of course, to be fair, canned foods are almost always inferior to fresh ones, so that was surely a contributer, too. I wasn't able to find out much of anything about the Tong Yeng company, except that they've been around since 1954, and produce various sorts of canned and cured fish and seafood.
One final interesting thing about eels is that their blood is toxic to humans, and many other mammals. But only in a limited way. Cooking destroys the toxic protein, as does the normal digestive process. (As I said, unagi is cooked, and I think most salt water eel is as well, which might be just to be safe about the toxin, and possible parasites, and/or for better flavor.) So it would appear that the only way you could poison yourself with the blood is if your tattoo artist doesn't properly sterilize their equipment after decorating an eel customer before you. Or, more disturbingly, if you and an eel friend share needles while injecting heroin.
But seriously, unagi eel is awesome, and I couldn't recommend it more. And maybe salt water eel is good, too, if fresh and prepared in the right way. Although many species of eel are endangered, some critically, so I guess I'll immediately contradict myself to say maybe we should eat less of them.
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