caviar

The prepared roe (eggs) of the female sturgeon, beluga, sevruga, and sterlet. These fish are caught in the winter months in the rivers flowing into the Baltic Sea and the Danube. Sturgeon roe is black, and is considered superior.

For the band of the same name, see Caviar (band).

Caviar is the processed salted roe of various species of fish, most notably sturgeon.

Today, the best caviar comes from sturgeon that is fished from the Caspian Sea by Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia. Some of the highest prices are paid for Beluga, Ossetra, and Sevruga varieties (note that the large-grained Beluga caviar comes from the Beluga sturgeon and has nothing to do with the Beluga whale — whales do not lay eggs). Caviar contains typically 4–8% salt, with the better varieties generally containing less salt.

In the early 1900s, both Canada and the United States were major suppliers of caviar to Europe, harvesting the eggs from lake sturgeon in the midwest, and from Shortnose sturgeon and Atlantic sturgeon that spawned in East Coast rivers. These lower-priced caviars are also from the sturgeon family.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service banned the import of Beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea in September 2005 in an attempt to protect the endangered Beluga sturgeon. A month later, it extended the ban to Beluga caviar from the Black Sea basin for similar reasons.

In January 2006, CITES, the convention for trade in endangered species, announced that they were "unable to approve the export quotas" for 2006 for caviar from wild stocks. If this is not resolved, the trade in caviar would be limited to that produced in sturgeon farms.

Serving is done with either horn, wood, or gold utensils (mother-of-pearl and plastic are also common), rather than silver or steel (even stainless), which may alter the taste and color of the caviar.

Commercial caviar production normally involves stunning the fish (usually with a club to the head) and extracting the ovaries, although a number of farmers are experimenting with surgical removal of the roe from live sturgeon, allowing the females to produce more eggs during their lifespans.

Caviar is not generally regarded as part of a vegetarian diet, even by vegetarians who consume milk and eggs. Caviar is also generally avoided by Jews because the Sturgeon lacks scales and is thus not kosher.

In Scandinavia, a significantly cheaper version of caviar, made from smoked cod roe, can be bought in tubes, suitable for use as sandwich filling. Caviar from burbot, vendace, and whitefish can be bought in Finland in its natural form as an alternative to sturgeon caviar. Caviar from burbot is regarded by some gourmets as such a delicacy that it even outranks Beluga in taste with the fraction of the price of sturgeon caviar.