"TroutRoe" news and stories

Sunburst Trout Farm's caviar. Photo: Fred Sauceman, Flickr.

Cosmetologists have long raided the kitchen cabinet to make everything from cucumber lotion to egg white shampoo, but Sunburst Trout Farm's Sally Eason believes her new trout caviar skin cream is unprecedented.

"I always heard caviar was the best thing for your skin," says Eason, whose family has been raising mountain trout in western North Carolina since World War II. Laughing, she adds: "I'm hoping I'm going to look like I'm 22."

Caviar beauty treatments aren't new, but none of the products currently on the market are made from golden trout roe. Sunburst Trout Farm has a history of extracting value from trout eggs, having pioneered trout caviar in the early 1990s. The tangerine-hued eggs have since surfaced at ritzy restaurants and on Jacques Pépin's television show.

But in 2007, Sunburst's processing plant was destroyed by light-fingered arsonists who made off with 670 pounds of the farm's treasured roe.