Species sheet · The Edible River
Wels catfish
The scaleless giant moving up our rivers.
- Grilled fillet or skewers, with spices
- Hungarian paprikás with cream and paprika
- Hot-smoked in thick slices
- In French
- Silure glane
- Scientific name
- Silurus glanis
- In the water
- Europe's largest freshwater fish, native to the Danube and the rivers of eastern Europe; settled in the Rhône, Loire, Seine and Garonne, it lives in deep holes and hunts at night.
- Season & buying
- Caught all year; young, modest-sized fish are the ones for the kitchen. The giants go back in the water.
- Common length
- ~150 cm
- How to identify it
- Bare, scaleless skin marbled green and brown
Six barbels, two of them very long on the upper lip
Massive body with an anal fin running to the tail
On the plate
White, firm, boneless flesh, fatty and a little bland in big fish, fine in small ones.
Avoid: Cooking an old giant: its fatty flesh stores whatever the river carries. Stick to young fish.
On the Tarn at Albi, wels have learned to beach themselves on the bank to snatch pigeons coming to drink, like river orcas.
In Umay recipes
One Umay recipe calls for it.
