Boiling Eels At Barney’s Seafood
On most mornings throughout the year, just a stone’s throw from the Tower of London, you will find them boiling the eels at Barney’s Seafood, under an old railway arch in Chambers St. For the past thirty-three years Mark Button has presided there over the business that his father Eddie Button took over in 1970 from Barnet Gritzman (brother of Solomon Gritzman, the owner of Tubby Isaac’s), who was here boiling eels since before World War II. Thus you will know that this is an established location for the pursuit of one of the East End’s most traditional culinary tasks, the preparation of jellied eels.
I joined Stuart – a blocksman of twenty-seven years’ experience – with a firm jaw and resolute eyes, at the rear of the arch in a room awash in pools of water, where he brandishes a fearsome curved blade with striking accomplishment, making short work of gutting and chopping great gleaming piles of eels. Arriving fresh from the tanks in Canning Town, Stuart tipped the morning’s eels out onto the bench where at first they slithered and slid in a shining mass. Then, gripping each one firmly by the head, Stuart decapitated it in the manner of those traitors of old across the road at Tower Hill, before slicing it open with a flick of the knife and disposing of both the head and the gut into the bin. It is a neat series of honed gestures that require both skill and years of practice, and you can be assured, Stuart has got the knack.
Interspersed with constant sharpening, since the eels’ back bone quickly blunts the long blade, Stuart likes to keep his knife razor sharp. “I’d rather cut my finger with a sharp blade than a blunt one!” he joked with enthusiastic grim humour as another eel’s head plopped into the bin. Yet make no mistake, Stuart has the greatest respect for eels. “Eels are very mysterious,” he said, turning philosophical and standing in absent-minded contemplation, with an eel and a blade in each hand, “There’s not a lot people know about eels. It’s funny how they know how to go to the Sargasso Sea, they’ve got a homing instinct.”
Once Stuart had chopped them up neatly, Paul the personable cook of fifteen years experience cooking eels, came from next door to collect the baskets of sliced fish and carry them through to the pots for boiling. Four tall steel cooking pots stood in a line on gas rings, each with filled with salt water and a bundle of parsley, some with eels already cooking and others just bubbling up to the boil, creating a wonderfully pungent sweet salty warm atmosphere. Paul tipped the eels straight into the hot water to cook, a process that can take between forty-five minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the type of eel, and he turned to lay out the bowls in neat lines upon shelves on the other side of the room, all ready for the eels when they are cooked. “Today we’ve got fresh Dutch eels and some frozen Chinese eels,” he explained helpfully, “Yesterday we had New Zealand eels and in a couple of weeks we’ll have the native Irish eels – they are best, seasonal, grown in the wild, nice texture and nice to eat.” Adding politely, “Have you ever thought of working in the fish industry?” he enquired – eager to make me feel included in such an enthralling process and flattering me with the question.
“You need to get them just before they’re cooked, when they’re as soft as possible” he continued, “because they harden afterwards,” – educating me, as he lifted a spoonful from the water and tasted one critically, before switching off the flames below and performing the delicate manoeuvre of sliding the pot off the cooking ring and onto a trolley. Catching me unawares so early in the morning, “Would you like to try one?” he asked – sensing my fascination – and naturally I assented. He passed me the morsel of pale eel flesh and I put it in my mouth. It was sweet and warm and it crumbled when I sank my teeth into it, releasing a delicate salty tangy flavour. In that instant, I wanted a plate of hot mashed potato to go with it, and I wanted more eels too. Paul did not know it was my first time, yet although I will have to wait until my next visit to a pie and mash shop to eat a plate of hot eels, I was converted.
Then Paul set about methodically distributing the eels equally into bowls, letting them cool and set in the jelly that is their natural preservative. And by then it was time for him to collect more baskets of sliced eels from Stuart and tip them into the cooking pot. Meanwhile, a stream of customers were pulling up outside and coming in excitedly to shake hands with Mark Button and carry away their bowls of fresh jellied eels for the weekend, as a tasty treat to restore their spirits. No other food excites such passion in the East End as the eel, and that is why East Enders delight to make the pilgrimage to Barney’s – they come to claim the dish that is their right.
“Eels are very mysterious, there’s not a lot people know about them”
Stuart, a blocksman of twenty-seven years experience who learnt the trade from Eddie Button.
Eels simmering with parsley in cooking pots of salt water.
Paul the cook – “Have you ever thought of working in the fish industry?”
Mark Button, proprietor of Barney’s Seafoods
You may also like to read about
So Long, Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eels Stall
Favourite Pie & Mash Shops (Part One)
Favourite Pie & Mash Shops (Part Two)
Fascinating!
Very interesting to see, but not a food I like. As a kid, I used to watch the live eels swimming in a tank in an eels, pie and mash shop on Well Street in Hackney , and it had a horrid fascination to see a hand plunge in and pull one out, because I knew its fate already…. But I could never bring myself to eat one. Valerie
Yet another article by the Gentle Author that’s made my day.
Barneys is the best seafood you can buy .
We don’t call Stuart ‘Stewpot!’ for nothing .
I feel a pilgrimage coming on. It’s been far too long.
Ah, the jellied eel! Food of Cockneys everywhere and a true delicacy that only those who know can cook properly…and eat properly, come to that.
My Dad was a fishmonger – Wet, Dried and Fried was his trade – and he sold jellied eels sometimes, but only if they were cooked by aunt Dolly, who knew the secret of the mysterious eel. She used to do them in big white enamel bowls – you can’t do them in plastic bowls. He only bought the best eels – which he said came from the Fens – or Irish eels. He’d never use Dutch eels: “too rubbery” he said. Occasionally someone would bring him a few eels they’d caught in Regents canal or the river Lea but these were kept for family consumption. He’d keep them in one of the big water butts until Sunday. A fresh eel is a delicious thing and cooked immediately has no peer. Aunt Dolly learnt the secrets from her mother, who learnt from her mother…and so on. The secret was passed down by experience, no-one had a written recipe. When there was a family wedding, funeral or Christening, Aunt Dolly usually got the enamels bowls out and delivered the delicacy for the gathered relatives – who were many in those days – and they queued up to get a small portion of the glistening ambrosia. It was often said – in jest of course – that it was a pity there weren’t more funerals!
But preparing the gelatinous fishy feast was only part of the secret, the other part is how you eat them, and that must remain a family secret. Those who know, know. Those who don’t just gulp them down with great show and gusto, spitting bones and bits of skin, washed down with a pint of beer. But this is to miss to piquant flavour of the well-cooked Ely eel and is not to be encouraged.
The jellied eel is the Cockney’s caviar, to be savoured and enjoyed in the same manner as the French enjoy Escargot or the Spanish wax lyrical about Paella.
And you should never, ever eat jellied eels with mash. Disgusting and just wrong in so many ways. Aunt Dolly would turn in her grave if she knew such behaviour went on.
Interesting about the eels but I prefer pie and mash – and I urge you to go to Tony’s Pie & Mash in the Market Square, Waltham Abbey, Essex and sample their wares. They regularly gain first prize for the best Pie & Mash shop in the area and my 24-yr old nephew, who’s eaten a few in his time, declares it spot on! He and I go there often!
The European eel is a critically endangered species – https://www.zsl.org/conservation/regions/uk-europe/eel-conservation
The pictures are fascinating! Thanks, Gentle Author. However, I support Valerie’s point that it’s not for me, as I can never make myself eat something that died in front of my eyes. The process is indeed very interesting. Reading literature and searching the Internet on some writing tips and blog topics, I rarely come across such posts. Yours made me look at things differently. It has inspired me to thing about the next post on my blog that will be connected with sea theme.
Thanks,
Samantha
That was really interesting. There’s a really fascinating book called Eel by Richard Schweid, in that great little Animal series published by Reaktion. It explains a great deal about the mysteries of eels.
Wonderful – I so miss the possibility of tasting these ever again 🙁
I Looking For Restaurants in New York
Queens or Manhattan that Have Boiled or
Baked EELS.
What great historic information this is. (Editor.. frel free to edit it… my spellings are very bad, plus I have sausage fingers!)
The spitalfields life website is so interesting.
My family moved into the Easy End in 1790.
I love jellied Eels and stewd Eels, well I should do… I was weened in Pie and mash shops.
I have always found Eels intetesting.
Over the years I have caught hundreds with just a rod and line. (have to release them now unless you have a commercial licence )
The best Eels that I caught were from big salt water lakes in Kent, fed by The Thames.
I am going back 30 years ago when you could catch them for the table.
Most of the Eels weighed between 1 3/4 and 3 lbs… big Eels, the real big ones we put back…
My mate Bill caught one of 5 1/2 lbs.
We used to catch around 20 and head home with them alive in a big wet sack that was placed in a big tub we made from cutting a blue plastic barrel in half.
Once we got home at night I would turn them slive in the bath half filled with salty water..(i used to tast it to make sure it was the same as the salty lake… did my best)
Next morning I would kill them, and jelly some and freeze some down for stewing.
I would just chopp them in chunks about 2 inches thick for jelling and cook them in salt water to tast and a big sprig of parsley. let them cool, put them in the fridge and let them set in thete own jelly. lovley, fit for a king my dad would say.
As a matter of interest.
My dad once caught a big Eel with his hands from a muddy whole ont The Thames at Greenwich…
He brought it home and put it in the bath… it was almost 5 foot long and weighed 8 lbs 2 oz.
The rod cought recourd at the time was 8lbs 8 oz.
He couldn’t bring himself round to kill it.
Dad put it back in the sack and drove down to The Theames and wached it swim strongley away.
Mark B
Great well written article, made my mouth water just reading it .The mysterious eel so under estimated by the uninitated.Expensive nowadays, not like years ago when it was poor mans food.I like them jellied, and when Ive been lucky enough to catch some they would be in the jellied liquer in about an hour of being home .Smoked eel is a luxury now, buttery and smokey , a real treat with celeric remoulade.Hope “Barney’s” continue to produce this wonderful product.