Robert Judd was a fish out of water a year ago when he began producing American trout roe — one of the world’s most glamorous and costly foods– at his little rainbow trout ranch near Payson.
“I ‘d never even attempted caviar prior to,” confessed the owner of the century-old Spring Lake Trout Farm.
When Bowman Brown, the award-winning chef from Forage, showed an interest in purchasing the fresh, orange-colored roe for his Salt Lake City dining establishment, Judd saw it as a way to diversify his family-owned company.
American Trout Roe Farm
Typically, caviar originates from beluga sturgeon caught in the Caspian Sea on the border of Russia and Iran. The species, nonetheless, is near and now over-fished extinction, restricting its sale in the United States. Today, American companies fill the demand by producing caviar from the roe of farm-raised and wild sturgeon, salmon, whitefish, paddlefish and trout.
Extravagant, protected caviar commonly can be “too salted, shady tasting and not that excellent,” Brown stated. So when he checked out a chef in Sweden who utilizes newly harvested trout roe, he was interested and chosen to float the concept past Judd.
“Robert was more than going to provide it a shot,” claimed Brown, who was recently named a semifinalist in the distinguished James Beard Foundation Awards.
Brown has used the small, bead-shaped eggs in a range of methods; currently, they fill a house-made potato cracker, which is served along side pinon-wood smoked trout. He serves about two quarts– or about 15,000 eggs– to Forage consumers each week.
“I constantly try to showcase exactly how one-of-a-kind it is and present it without taking away from its fragile taste or texture,” Brown claimed. “If you put it in a butter sauce it would lose its magic.”.
Rinsed and lightly salted just prior to serving, the caviar surprisingly “does not have the taste of fish,” claimed Brown. “It’s more like an egg yolk.”.
Biting into the eggs, restaurants experience a “gentle pop” and afterwards they “melt in your mouth,” he stated. “For a lot of people it’s a various experience.”.
Producing caviar was a different experience for Judd, too.
Judd’s dad, an avid fisherman who possessed clothing establishments in Nevada, got the company 35 years earlier on an impulse. Judd was 7 at the time.
“We were in Payson looking for a relative,” Judd remembered. “We stopped for directions and discovered the trout ranch was for sale.”.
The major income for the Judd family from Spring Lake Trout Farm, founded in 1912, has actually been raising live trout to stock in reservoirs and personal ponds, consisting of those at East Canyon and Snowbird.
The household has supplemented its earnings by allowing the general public to fish from a large pond on the property and by selling “sighted” trout roe to hatcheries.
