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Favourite fish recipe

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I've been fortunate enough to eat fillets of pickerel sizzling in a pan, the fish having been only minutes before swimming yards out front of camp. But not being the experienced fisher nor cook I need to ask...
How do you prepare your freshly caught fish?
Any secret ingredients? Dusting powders? Coatings? Spices? Exotic oil for the pan?
 
Trout for breakfast, lightly breaded and pan fried with some bratkartoffeln (German fried potatoes). For the breading, flour and breadcrumbs with some dill, no eggwash, just some oil on the fish and into the breading once, then into the pan. Any white fish will work, the light breading doesn't over power lighter fish.
 
Rocky Madsen's fish crisp, original. Margarine if you have it and canola oil if not. Scarf er down. Repeat as necessary.

Salt, pepper and breadcrumbs works too. And for the purist...just pop them fillets in the pan. I like mine with the above recipe though.

Christy
 
1 filet of your favorite fish, spices of choice, dutch oven, 1 cedar shake; prepare the filet with your spices and sprinkle the extra on the shake; add a little oil to the dutch oven and place the shake in the DO with the filet on the shake; put hot coals under and on the DO; after 10 minutes turn the shake and the filet over; after 10 more minutes, throw the filet in the fire, and eat the shake. Enjoy!!!:p
 
And for the purist...just pop them fillets in the pan.

No purist here, I just never had breadcrumbs or spices beyond (unused in fresh fish frying) salt and pepper available.

Fillet, a little oil, lightly fry one side, flip, lightly fry the other side, burn my tongue straight outa the fry pan. Heaven.

That fresh flesh was usually trout, to my mind the tastiest of wild game, excepting maybe duck breast, and I did not want to disguise that seldom seen flavor.

Brad (I got the name right this time) will probably add Ghost peppers.
 
1 filet of your favorite fish, spices of choice, dutch oven, 1 cedar shake; prepare the filet with your spices and sprinkle the extra on the shake; add a little oil to the dutch oven and place the shake in the DO with the filet on the shake; put hot coals under and on the DO; after 10 minutes turn the shake and the filet over; after 10 more minutes, throw the filet in the fire, and eat the shake. Enjoy!!!:p

I do believe that was my father's recipe for catfish.
 
Sigurd Olson on the frying of brook trout.

Clean them well, but don’t cut off the heads. Leave the eyes in though your guests may revolt. Dry them thoroughly, salt and pepper to taste and finish by rolling them in either flour or cornmeal.


Butter the pan and get it just hot enough so that the butter begins to brown, and then drop your fish in one at a time.


Don’t for heaven’s sake dump them all in together or the butter will get cold, and don’t have too much grease, and don’t treat brook trout as though they were ordinary fish. Trout are different and the cooking of them is an art practiced successfully only by those who understand them and who have served a long apprenticeship exploring their haunts.


When you get done, if you have lived right and know the signs, you will have something that you will remember for a thousand meals afterward, a crisp, brown, tender delicacy with a flavor compounded of spring-fed pools, moss-covered rocks, water cress with marsh marigold on the side, deep shadows under the alders and even the sound of whitethroats beside some rapids or the sooming of nighthawks at dusk.


Most people realize at once that no fish can ever measure up to such an outstanding combination of qualities unless the fisherman and cook has through the years endowed some particular species with a proper emotional background. That accomplished—and most trout fishermen have reached that point or they long ago would have abandoned their sport for something much less arduous—then the actual cooking and its technique becomes instinctive procedure.


And when it comes to the serving of trout, the real artist knows that, if possible, it should be the pièce de résistance, should not be served with many other things, should be eaten alone as it deserves with a bit of bread, a pickle and a cup of coffee, that it is not a food to neutralize with a lot of foreign vegetables and gravy and other uncomplementary side dishes, that it tastes best alone where its delicate flavors have no competition.


And the heads—my grandmother, who was a past master at the cooking of trout, told me that they were by far the best part of the fish, that only insane people ever threw them away, that the cheeks and the choice bits of flesh back of the skull were tastier than all the rest, that severing the head meant an irreplaceable loss of juices and certain intangible qualities that only a connoisseur could recognize and appreciate.


Cook a brook trout right and you have a dish worth all the effort, but cook it carelessly without the thought of the aesthetic values and you have a dish that makes you wonder why anyone should go through the hardship necessary to bring in a mess when carp and other rough fish are on the market.
 
I'm liking the idea of Pike Pad Thai. Or maybe Thai Pickerel Coconut Soup. I love Thai food.
Some fresh, some dried ingredients. It could work. I'm serious about this. And yes, hot peppers in the Thai.

BTW, I'm getting kinda used to Rob.
 
Can of Tuna, large Tablespoon of Mayo, 1/2 tablespoon sweet relish, on multigrain bread:cool:
 
You caught a can of tuna? Amazing!
Speaking of tuna, I went deep sea fishing off Cape Hatteras years ago and caught a yellow fin tuna. It torpedoed straight down, and was a heck of a thing to drag back up; like hauling up a cinder block. The guys on the dock filleted it up, along with the others we caught. The Mahi Mahi was fantastic. The tuna was out of this world. The 6 of us couldn't eat it all so we brought it home, packed on ice of course. Nothing fancy, just lightly seared in butter in a pan. Maybe a splash of white wine. Butter is a good thing.

A few years ago talking to a couple guys just returned from a deep sea fishing trip, at a Mexican resort, the two guides produced an armful of cold beers while we watched them clean the catch. I have no idea what they caught, neither did they. We didn't understand the Spanish names for them. They halved a few dozen limes and squeezed them over the thinly shaved flesh, and we ate Pacific sashimi and cold beers under a hot Mexican sun. Hola, oh yeah.
 
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We always ran a bunch of saltine crackers through a blender prior to the fishing trip to make the coating. Just a dusting of flour, then dipped in egg, rolled in the crackers and fried in peanut oil. Peanut oil can take more heat than other veggie oils. Walleye or as our Canadian friends call them Pickerel, don't have much if any fishy taste, one reason people that don't like fish like them. They take on the taste of whatever you cook them in. Shore Lunch brand beer batter coating is a real favorite of my old friends for frying Walleye when I visit Minnesota.

frozentripper........
Sig knew what he was talking about, where did you find those good quotes? Every fall I make a trip to somewhere that has brook trout, everything about them brings great joy to my life.

Lake trout with salt, black pepper, a bunch of lemon & onion slices stuffed in the body cavity. Then wrapped in foil and tossed on hot alder coals, and cooked for +/- 10 minuets on each side. is wonderful. As is butterflied Sockeye salmon fresh from the Copper River grilled on Alder coals with a little sprinkle of brown sugar/salt/black pepper on the flesh side.
Somewhere I have a great lake trout chowder recipe that I will try to find and post here. I ate about a gallon of it one cold October night out on Isle Royale in Lake Superior.
 
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Lakers and bookies are my 2 favorites! No need for anything other than a tablespoon of peanut oil, fresh chopped parsley, garlic powder and a lemon.
Heat oil, sprinkle on seasoning, and sear both sides!

All others, pike, bass, walleye..

McCormick beer batter with magic hat#9 or most other darker beer, fresh parsley, garlic powder, and squeeze in some lemon juice.
Mix the beer batter light, I like a thin crust,( the thicker the batter, the thicker the crust, ) so the batter readily runs off the spoon, so keep adding beer a little at a time.
Heat oil (about an inch deep in small pan as to not need a lot of oil).
Add seasonings to the batter.
Lightly coat the fish in small bite sized prices, (don't need any utensils to eat) and fry on both sides until golden brown.

My dad likes a 50/50 mix of Italian bread crumbs and bisquick. Dampen fillets, coat with the dry mix and fry. This tastes good but makes a mess of the oil with all the crumbs that fall of the fish. If cooking for a large group several oil changes are required.

Jason
 
BB,

Sig knew what he was talking about, where did you find those good quotes?

They're here... written during the 30s, 40s and 50s. Found them some time ago googling on what books to read.

https://www.northland.edu/sustain/soei/sigurd-legacy/sigurd-articles/

In ancient times (do I sound like Sig now...heh, heh) I was an Ontario MNR tech doing creel census on brook trout lakes and got to see some nice fish, old vets that had been catching them all their lives and some pretty good lakes and streams... they are a fish with an aura about them like SO describes since they usually reside only in clean, spring-fed waters. If you can find a high-quality natural area that also produces brook trout you know that it isn't too far changed from it's natural state, and getting to eat some naturally-grown brookies from it, if you're lucky enough to catch them, adds a little bit of something that Sig was describing.
 
My recipe is adapted from the following lodges shore lunch. I have a celiac in the family so we use GF flour.

50% Flour, 50% cornmeal. dip in egg and milk place in very hot pan. flip. serve with bacon, potatoes, creamed corn, beans, & bread. I find I cannot get it hot enough at home (even on the side burner of the BBQ) to come close to the pan on the coals while in the woods. The fire temp is an art.

Here is the lodges...

http://www.redindianlodge.com/_docs/ShoreLunchRecipe.pdf
 
My all time favourite is taking a good quality wild rice soup such as "Shore Lunch", cutting the fish into chucks and turning it into a fish chowder. I have loved this with any type of fish that I have tried.
 
frozentripper...........
Thank you for the link to Northland College and some more of the writings of Sigrud F. Olson. I have all his books, all but the last one autographed by him. I enjoyed many cups of coffee with him and his wife Elizabeth and a metric ton of her wonderful homemade doughnuts. I have also camped & fished at some of the places that he wrote about. A wonderful couple that helped change my life for the better.

Here is the recipe for lake trout chowder.
One box of Betty Crocker Augraton Potatoes, with real Cheese sauce
one packet of Knorr Leek Soup
One chopped up onion
Mix the dried potatoes and leek soup together in a big pot add as much water as the two packages call for, put in the real cheese sauce too, toss in the onion a bring all to a boil. When the potatoes are done, add chunks of cut up, skinned lake trout fillet. Cook for another 10-15 minutes. Serve with Pilot Bread Crackers if you have them or cracker of your choice. Works good with Sockeye salmon, I haven't tried it with other fish, I'm pretty sure most would be good. This is also a good recipe if you planned to catch lots of fish for a fish fry and only caught one small one. Depending on how many you need to feed or how small the fish is you may have to add a bunch more water to make the chowder consistency somewhat thinner, so that everyone gets at least a small bowl full.
I also like Finnish Fish Head Soup, or Kalamojakka, lot's of recipe's on the inter-webs google if you are interested. Lot's of cream, real potatoes, butter, all maybe to heavy for a canoe trip with lots of portages.
 
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