- It takes around 10-15 years of apprenticeship before caviar makers in Russia are allowed to process caviar on their own.
- Ancient Persians invented salted caviar, but it was the Russians who first came up with lightly-salted (Malossal) caviar.
- The only sturgeon roe that cannot be eaten is from the Green Sturgeon (its flesh and roe are poisonous).
- The worlds’ largest supply of caviar is the Caspian Sea (the largest inland sea in the world), followed by the Black Sea.
- The Russian word for caviar is Ikra.
- Some species of sturgeon, can live up to 100 years or more.
- 95% of caviar is imported to the US, the European Union, Switzerland, and Japan.
- Some sturgeon can grow up to 2500 pounds and 15-feet long.
- One ounce of caviar contains only 70 calories.
- Caviar is high in Iron, in fact you can get over 10% of your daily requirement of iron from caviar roe.
- Astrakhan, Russia has the oldest (some over 200-years old) and largest Caviar fisheries in the world.
- The word sturgeon, is originally a German word storjen.
- Caviar is processed by running the large sac of roe over an ultra-fine mesh screen which separates the eggs into individual grains.
- Sturgeons became endangered due to overfishing and also because the traditional method of removing the eggs was to kill the fish. Today many caviar producers surgically remove the eggs keeping the sturgeon alive to produce more eggs.
- Caviar was first canned in 1906.
- Caviar was once served in saloons to get people to drink more beer.
- Fresh Caviar must be stored at 28-31 degrees Fahrenheit (-3C).
- The largest sturgeon ever caught (in 1736) was a 28-foot long Beluga that weighed 4,570 pounds.
- Europeans like lightly-salted caviar, while North Americans and the Japanese prefer more heavily salted versions.
- The two main producers of caviar are not surprisingly Russia and Iran (as both countries are located on either side of the Caspian Sea).
- One of the reasons Caviar is so expensive, is because it takes the sturgeon a long time to mature: Beluga 20 years, Osetra 13-15 years, and Sevruga 6 – 10 years.
- Caviar is packaged in 1-ounce, 2-ounce, and 5-ounce containers, or 12, 30, 50, 100, 200, 300, 500 gram and 1KG tins.