How an Eel Farm Grows and Smokes Eels for Top Sushi Restaurants — Dan Does

With demand fueled by America's obsession with sushi, eel consumption has grown like crazy over the last 20 to 30 years. The wild thing is, most of the eels eaten in America were actually caught here as little baby glass eels, flown around the world to grow, and then flown all the way back to be served in American restaurants. But one company is trying to change that. So today, I'm up in Maine to see how Sarah Rademacher at American Unagi is building America's only glass eel farming operation. The first eels that I grew were in my basement. That's crazy. I hear all good startups happen there or in the garage. I didn't intentionally come to Maine to grow eels. There's an eel fishery here for glass eels. It's one of the most valuable fisheries in the U.S. per pound. These eels go for $2,000 a pound as babies. I said, why isn't anybody growing this here in the U.S.? Clearly, there's a market. That's really kind of what started this whole dive into eels. Once a year, Maine's legendary glass eel fishermen set out their nets to catch tiny, transparent eels that are migrating along the shoreline. The fishermen filter, clean, and weigh the baby eels, and then sell them off to farmers. From here, Sarah introduces the glass eels to her tanks and starts the long process of growing eels to be sold across the country live and smoked. This is our glass eel system, where they come in first off the river. So incredible. Look at them. See the little faces? Do your eels grow faster than they would in the wild? Yeah, so in Maine, it takes anywhere from five years to 30 years for them to reach maturity. And yours can get to maturity in two at some point? Seven months to two years. Holy shoot. Yeah, you know, our eels are happy, so that way they grow the best, they taste the best. What do eels eat? So when they're young, you know, they eat everything from algae to insects, and then as they grow older, they start to eat more fish. The cool thing with fish farming is fish are one of the most efficient sources of protein. So with our eels, 1.4 pounds of fish feed will produce one pound of eel. When you compare that to other animals, like something like a cow, it eats 10 pounds of food for every pound. And why is that? They have less excrement? They're cold-blooded, so they don't spend a lot of their energy making heat or warming their body. The other thing is, you've got them in water, so they don't have to deal with gravity. So she's just turning on the feeder now. So what is actually happening in this device? So basically, as this spins, it drops feed in for the eels. Oh my God, that's so cool. So what's the point in this basket? It's just a good way for us to have the eels come up here to visit. It allows us to see how the eels are doing, make sure they look healthy, their fins look good. It also helps prevent us from making sure we don't waste any feed. So the basket will catch it, we can make sure that we're not overfeeding, underfeeding, all of that. And it's just nice, it's fun. I love these fish. Part of this is just fun? Yeah, look at all those chubby little faces. So what would happen if there was an eel in here that was just a much faster grower? It wouldn't eat the same size feed, it would be a bad farming. So as they grow, we have to make sure that they are with like sizes. Right, so where does the poop go? Keeping a clean tank is a big part of keeping our eels happy and healthy. So water is constantly circulating actually this way. And what happens, same way when you flush a toilet, is you get waste coming to the center. This pulls it up off the bottom and then runs it through this drain. All of those drains drain the solid waste down into a central drain. That then runs through what's called a drum filter. Water is constantly circulating through the whole system. It first runs through a drum filter, which uses suction to pull water through a fine screen to catch solid waste. And then it runs through a pool of bio media, which adds back beneficial bacteria. So then what we do is we have to make sure we have good gases. So it's taking out the CO2 and adding oxygen. From here, the eels getting close to market size are moved to the next room where they have bigger tanks and bigger feed. We're gonna be growing a lot in the next year and building a new facility, but this is where we're doing it right now. It's the same sort of components that you just saw. We're removing solids. We're cleaning up the water. We're sending it back into the tank. When the eels get to a certain size, we're able to start pulling the eels off for harvest, grading them by hand. Ready time. Okay, here we go. So. Ah! Oh, crazy. So these are, I mean, they are different sizes. Yep. So this is just a very simple grader. We're actually, it's kind of designed similar to what the Japanese farms do. What's going there? Anything that needs more time to grow. So most of these eels need more time. Yep. We're very picky on what we're putting out. So sometimes there'll be ones that, like, they're big, but we know they're gonna get bigger. So we like- Oh, what? Yeah, cause like, see, like, this guy, like, that's a nice size eel, but it's long. Right. And so we're like, we'd rather wait to sell out, you know, a larger product and more consistent. Plump. Plump, exactly. Are you gonna touch an eel? Sure, I'll touch an eel. Okay. Oh my God. All right. Well, this guy looks pretty big here. Nope. Takes a little bit of getting used to. Did you- Yeah. Are you able to get one? Nope. You can't give up. I'm 0 for 2. You said they weren't slimy. I guess I'm just used to it. I don't know. Oh my God. How do you do it? Is there a method to this? You gotta stay relaxed. Yeah. This, okay. Nailed it. There you go. Good job. I don't know. I was looking for way too much praise there. Let me get one more big one. Or are you just looking for an edit so you look good? No, no. First time. No way. You know, after we've sorted them out into the sizes, we take the ones that are ready for harvest and they actually go into a purge tank. So they hang out, we drop the temperature down, let them get relaxed before we either ship them out or process them. So they'll hang out here for a couple of days. Again, water temperature drops, they get relaxed and chilled out. And then we either sell them live, so we'll bag them up, ship them out, or we'll send them down to Charlie. The next stop for these eels is two hours south in a town called Bremen, Maine, where Charlie Walsh processes the eels and prepares them for smoking. We hold the eels on an ice slurry to keep them very cold, but then also protect the skin from oxidizing. And so end up with a beautiful product that has just been bled after being quickly dispatched. So you taught yourself actually how to do this? Yeah, when COVID hit, we ended up not being able to sell as many live eels. And so there was a real need to be able to have a processed product. So I locked myself in my kitchen and figured out how to do it on my own. And now I'm able to do it pretty quickly. What I do is anchor the eel through a nail in the cutting board and start with the knife directly above the spine. And we're going to just slowly push our way down the spine. Jeez Louise. And then open to make sure that we're avoiding the gut cavity and then very carefully work down the fish again. You can just open the eel, get underneath the guts from one side and also then get the membrane out. We're going to come over with the second face of the knife underneath the spine. We're going to very carefully push underneath and then follow the spine down the fish. This seems robotic. It's 20,000 eels in. Do you think I should actually try this? Yeah, you're welcome to. Do you not think that when we're doing, when we're trying to make a piece of content here that is about sustainability, that watching me hack my way through an eel is kind of in poor taste? No, because it might make me look really good. Just even trying to grab it. I mean, you can't honestly grip onto it. I haven't butterflied anything in years. I'm glad I'm starting with an eel in the freezing cold. You're going to take this thumb and you're going to put it right there. And that's actually what you're going to be doing you're pushing with. It's twisting. I think this is achieving the goal of making you look good. Oh yeah. I love that you're just letting me die here also. Do you want a lifeline? A lifeline in right above the spine. And then it is just a push. All right. This one's going to go to famous sushi chefs, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. With your signature on it. I'm in the other side too, which is not what you hate to see. It is a brutal thing. Like, I mean, I'm talking six months worth of- And you've done a lot of butchering, right? No, this was my first processing job. This is my wife, Hannah. We've created an eel processing assembly line. So the next step in the process is actually just cleaning up the fillets after butterflying. So what do you guys usually talk about? Normally we're just blasting disco at the top of volume. Again, customers can buy eels one of three ways. They can buy them live, they can buy them butterflied, and they can buy them smoked and ready to eat. All right, so we've seen all of the work that goes into getting these amazing fillets. So now it's time to see how you guys cook them. Yeah. You developed the recipe for the smoked product like right here, right? Yeah, in this smoker in this backyard with Sarah, yeah. It is just a nine minute brine in a 70 degree salt brine and hardwood smoke. That is it. These have been on for about three hours. Yep. Let's pop them open and have some meal. Absolutely. Oh my God. Look at the color. Beautiful fillets. This is a beautifully smoked piece of fish. The smoke deal and having that over the cutting board the first time was one of those like epiphany moments in this whole journey of I have to make it. And it was kind of the real start of knowing that this was a product I was gonna make. Even out of the basement eels? Even more so. I was like, man. You were like, I grew these in my basement? No, I like kid you not. It was like, man, it's like one of the best fish I've had. And I grew them in my basement. Like, can you imagine when I like can build a facility and like grow this thing? How much better it's gonna get? Truly, I'm really excited to try it right now. Absolutely. Should we get in? Yeah. Oh, help yourself. It should have a nice buttery. I usually just scrape it off the skin. Not for me. Oh. Not for me. Me either. The meat itself is so fatty and rich and luscious. For people that haven't had it, it's kind of like the best of the sea and the land combined. And that's kind of what you do, I guess. Right? Well played. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to thank you guys so much for having me up here and showing me all the stages of this thing. It's incredible how much labor and work it is to get from the ocean to here. I mean, for me, it's worth it. For us, it's worth it. Yeah. No, exactly. I joke around my entire job is making round things flat. Does that joke bring the house down? No, my mom doesn't even laugh at that joke.