2023-12-29 20:01:48
It’s almost New Year’s Eve. And some of you might put a little Belgian caviar on the buffet menu. There is a specialized company in Belgium, near Mouscron. It produces 11 tonnes of caviar per year.
Belgian caviar from tank to plate
There is only one sturgeon breeding farm in Belgium. 70,000 fish artificially reproduced in Flanders swim in 200 pools which make up the site. “In the breeding room, we receive fish measuring 10 centimeters and we raise them until sexual maturity. Afterwards, we separate the boys and the girls, and obviously only the girls make caviar“, explains Thierry Bay, Aquaculturist and Director of Belgian Quality Fish.
The males are therefore separated from the batch of sturgeons around adolescence to be directed towards human consumption or recreational fishing. Impossible to separate the sexes before.”At 1 year old, we cannot distinguish males from females, an ultrasound will need to be done.“, continues Thierry Bay. “When this is done, there will be homogeneous batches of females that are 4 years old. And they will probably produce caviar in 3 years. But they will be exploited for another 7-8 years, up to 15 years“.
The rest takes place in the maturing room. The soon-to-be-ripe females remain in fresh water for a few more weeks to refine the taste, this is the last step before extracting the eggs. “The belly of the fish is well inflated, we can expect 15 to 20% caviar on a fish of this size, i.e. 3 or 4 kilos.“, specifies the aquaculturist. The whole challenge is therefore to collect the eggs at the right time. And that happens near Turnhout. It is the mixture between the salt and the eggs, which gives the caviar.
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