Great Recipes for Cooking Trout
Catching trout can be a blast, but cooking trout can be fun too! You don’t have to be a master chef to produce a good trout dish, but having a good recipe doesn’t hurt. Playing to the strengths of the distinct flavor of trout is a great place to start before you get creative. In this article I am going to list a few of my favorite trout recipes including a few recommendations for sides to serve with your trout.
Cooking trout doesn’t have to mean slaving over a hot stove—at least not with this recipe for oven baked trout. You’ll need one pound of trout fillets, half a cup of sour cream, half a cup of mayonnaise, a quarter cup of grated parmesan cheese, a tablespoon of lemon juice, half a teaspoon of salt, diced red onions to taste, and paprika to sprinkle on top. Place the fish fillets into a lightly greased baking dish. I find that glass works best for this. In a bowl, mix together the sour cream, mayonnaise, parmesan cheese, lemon juice, and red onions. Using a plastic spatula, spread the mixture over each trout fillet, taking care to reach the sides. Sprinkle a bit of paprika (and pepper, if you like) over the top of each fillet. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and bake the fish for about 25 minutes or until the fish flakes easily when scraped with a fork. For me, nothing goes better with this than a bed of wild or white rice. Yum!
If grilling is more your style and taste, this recipe for honey mustard trout a la grille is definitely a keeper! You will need about six trout fillets, a quarter cup of mayonnaise, a tablespoon of honey, a tablespoon of mustard, a tablespoon of cider vinegar, an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and an onion sliced into crescents. In a large bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, honey, mustard, vinegar, and cayenne pepper. Preheat the grill to a medium-high heat. Spray the grate of your grill with cooking spray or slap a bit of olive oil onto it to ensure that the fillets don’t stick to it. Lay down the onion crescents onto the grate and then place the fillets on top of the onions. Baste each fillet with the honey mustard mixture and then cover with the grill’s lid. Cook for about five minutes before basting the fish again. Re-cover and cook for another five minutes, or until the fish flakes easily with a fork. Serve immediately with or without the onions. It may sound a little lame, but I find a nice leafy salad with Italian dressing goes excellent with this recipe.
Last, but not least, we have a killer recipe for fried trout. If you’re like me, you probably groan at the thought of frying either because of the mess or because grease splatters really hurt… But I promise you that this recipe is totally worth the clean up…and ointment. You will need three or four trout fillets, two tablespoons of honey, four tablespoons of butter, a lemon, an egg, a third cup of milk, a quarter cup of flour, half a cup of cornmeal, and salt and pepper (to taste). In a shallow bowl, mix together the flour, cornmeal, salt, and pepper. In another shallow bowl, whisk together the egg and milk. Slice the lemon in half and rub it over the trout fillets. Roll each fillet in the cornmeal-flour mixture, then through the egg and milk mixture. Give each side another good coating of the cornmeal flour mixture, then set the fillets onto wax paper or a plate. Heat up the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Place the trout into the pan and cook them until both sides have turned a nice golden brown color. Drizzle each fillet with honey and continue to cook them for another four minutes or so. My favorite side for this one is homemade oven-baked French fries and baked beans. If I don’t have the time to make homemade fries, I usually pick up a bag of steak fries from the store as they go just as nicely.
These recipes for cooking trout vary quite a bit, but it’s nice to have a variety—especially if you’re big on trout! Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!