Pan-Fried Trout
I am most familiar with Rainbow, Lochleven, Cutthroat and Brook Trout but this method works equally well with many fish, including Salmon.
4 fish, gutted and cleaned, rinsed in cold water, tails intact.
Heads removed – I don’t like my food looking back at me.
1 cup of flour (my preference)
or
1/2 cup flour & 1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
3 tblsp olive oil or any vegetable oil.
Optional: Lemon cut in wedges for garnish.
Heat oil in cast-iron skillet over medium heat.
In shallow dish, combine flour [cornmeal] salt, pepper.
Raise heat to high.
Dredge fish in flour mixture and fry in hot oil 4-6 minutes on each side
until meat flakes with a fork.
Serve garnished with lemon wedge if desired.
To bone the trout:
Slit the trout down the back and seperate halves.
The spine/bones will be with one half and can be removed.
Examine the bones for missing ‘ribs’, which will be easily found by matching the location.
How To Baconify Your Bourbon
“Why would you want to put bacon in your bourbon?
If you have to ask, this isn’t the post for you”.
A 750 ml bottle (fifth) of good bourbon.
I drink Old Charter when I can find it.
The best smoked bacon you can find.
Fry 3-4 slices of bacon.
Retain a ounce or so of the rendered fat, let cool but not solidify.
Do whatever you like with the bacon. You’ll think of something. 😀
Pour the fat and the bourbon in a glass jar and let sit to taste.
Several hours to a few days.
Put jar in freezer overnight.
Fat will congeal and is easily removed/strained.
Strain thru coffee filter if desired.
Rebottle it.
Benton’s Old-Fashioned
2 oz. Bacon Bourbon
1/4 oz. Maple Syrup.
2 dashes Angostura bitters.
Stir with ice and serve on the rocks. Garnish with twist of orange.
h/t The Agitator.
I’ve never tasted so much high quality fish as on a trip to Newfoundland eons ago. My husband and I got to experience firsthand the legendary generosity of Newfoundlanders.
At a wharf, fishermen handed us a shopping bag filled with freshly caught King Crab. Seeing we were camping, we had crab for lunch, dinner, and breakfast and shared some with fellow campers as well.
On another occasion, while traveling inland, we came upon a brook/river where two men in hip waders were fishing. We stayed to watch them for a while. I never forget the delicious taste of the huge German Brown trout they insisted we take back to camp with us.
And as luck would have it, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time when the Caplins arrived on the beach to spawn. All we had to do was keep a bag open and they’d jump right in. So we had Caplins for lunch, dinner, and breakfast.
The only fish we eat now is wild salmon from the remote Stikine River in BC.
I drench the salmon in a mixture of equal amounts of lemon juice, stone ground mustard, and maple syrup, and then bake it. Heavenly!
Here‘s an image of Caplins spawning.
We tended to use the terms ‘German Brown’ and ‘Lochleven’ interchangeably. There’s a lot of variety in the Brown Trout group, some looking much like the Scottish version.
I’m not a great salmon fancier, although my wife is, but your recipe sounds so good I’m going to try it, thanks.
BTW: Raye’s Mustard in Eastport, ME is the last remaining stone-ground mustard mill in the country. I particularly recommend:
Old World Gourmet (a Dijon style); Dundicott Hott (yes, it’s hot); Jameson Tavern (superb!)
We always ate Brook and Rainbow trout. I love walleye, but rainbow trout remains my favorite fish to eat, fried. 🙂
The key to good trout is fresh fish, straight out of the stream. None better.
I routinely ate these while living in Eastern Oregon and also while visiting your neck of the woods (Colorado).
Here in Texas, we have nothing to compare.
In the Pacific Northwest, you’ll find Steelhead, which are Rainbow trout that breed in fresh water, then migrate to the ocean. They’re rather lean when they come back to breed, but pound for pound, a very ‘fighting’ fish – you’d swear you have a 5-pounder on the line but it turns out to be only 2-pounder.
What sort of fish live in the lower Rio?
Lot of Texans used to vacation at my Aunt/Uncle’s ranch in the upper Rio Grande valley for the mild summers and great fishing.
We used to record all the big catches – length, weight, lure/fly, location.
The biggest was a 36″, 18 lb Lochleven but what really amazed me was a 32″ 16 lb Rainbow. Took the fisherman well over an hour to land it.
Eastern Brook Trout are cannibal and were stocked to keep down the population of ‘suckers’, a non-game fish, edible but very bony and unwanted.
Uncle Wal used to breed trout and stock the local streams. It saved the State Game & Fish the expense of stocking remote places, so they let him take spawn from a couple of lakes and they kept an eye out for poachers. They’d arrest any poachers and bring them before the judge – who happened to be Uncle Wal. He fined them and confiscated the fish. Always had trout in the freezer and hadn’t been fishing in 20 years. 😀
Our places are bordered by the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers. We have catfish, alligator gar, buffalo, bass and perch.
The water is murky and dangerous, full of water moccasins, turtles and the occasional alligator.
The lower Rio Grande is similar.
The catfish are edible, but not in the same league with fresh trout.
There are good trout in parts of New Mexico. While in Eastern Oregon we caught nice trout and Coho salmon. To die for.
BTW:
I posted this basic, home-style recipe because fish is one of the foods that I feel are best prepared in a very simple fashion. I’ve eaten trout cooked this way, 20 minutes out of the water and they were better than any I ever got in a restaurant. And that includes some damn fine restaurants.
Vingette:
In 1957, I was dining on Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey, California. I ordered the Trout Almondine.
When she served me, the waitress asked if I wanted ketchup. I totally cracked up.
The poor girl assumed I was laughing at her accent and I hastened to apologize and reassure her. She was a new immigrant from Sweden and had evidently been much impressed by our habit of putting ketchup on potatoes, eggs, pasta, etc. – pretty much everything but ice cream.
(I know – now someone’s gonna say: Ice Cream & ketchup? Hmmm.) I asked her favorite Swedish dish and she said, “Surströmming”, which she explained is a fermented fish, rather acid and pungent*. I asked if she would put ketchup on it and she understood how I felt about trout and ketchup.
Wikipedia: When opened, the contents release a strong and sometimes overwhelming odor; the dish is ordinarily eaten outdoors. [] a newly-opened can of surströmming has one of the most putrid food smells in the world.