Cooking Trout

I have just cooked a 2 1/2 lb rainbow caught yesterday, taken from clear still water. The fish was in beautifull condition, the flesh appeared quite a nice pink colour prior to being cooked and was not frozen overnight.
It tasted like a mouthfull of mud! and the flesh had turned an insipid pinky yellowy type colour.
The fish I had been catching during the depths of winter had a lovely dark pink salmon type colour flesh and tasted delicious, retaining the nice dark pink colour after cooking.
Why?
Is there a right and a wrong time to eat trout? are there seasons depending on what they are feeding on?
This particular fish battled really hard and because I found myself on the wrong side of a tree to my landing net I had to play him out and drag him up the bank. Could it be anything to do with a build up of lactic acid?
Your thoughts please gents.
Thanks

Most likely a recently stocked trout that has been fed up on pellets.

After a few weeks in a rich water the trout taste a lot better. Be careful when cleaning trout. These days I take the whole head off. Make sure you get rid of the blood line along the backbone. This coagulated blood goes off very quick and can taint the flesh.

But often you do get the odd one that tastes a bit insipid.

Overwintered reservoir fish that are silvery and pink fleshed are normally very tasty.

I used to have all sorts of problems cooking trout - so much so that I ended up giving them away; the futilty of this eventually struck home and I stopped fishing for them altogether unless catch-and-release was an option.

Recently, in an attempt to broaden my angling as well as culinary horizons, I experimented again. Ron is dead right; freshly stocked trout can taste awful. If you are lucky enough to fish a clear-water lake, try to select which fish to try and catch, not just by size, but by condition. Avoid dark looking rainbows and try to pick out those which appear to have full tails, as this is a good indicator that they have been at liberty for a couple of weeks.

Having caught your trout, try to keep it cold. I take a cool-box in the car, with a couple of ice-packs in it. As soon as I catch a trout it is consigned to the cool-box. Gut them as soon as you can; again, I am in complete agreement with Ron in advising that the head be removed completely, including the pectoral fins. I also cut off the tail. The fish can then be slit from the head end to the vent and the insides cleaned out. Score along the spine to release the clotted blood which is contained behind a membrane; be as particular about this as you can.

As for cooking, I just stuff a couple of crushed garlic cloves inside, along with whatever else is handy; some chopped parsley, a few chopped spring onions, whatever. Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper and wrap in foil. Cook in a hot oven for about twenty five minutes (based on a two-pound fish, uncleaned weight). After the allotted time I find it best to carefully lift the foil away and check if the flesh will come easily away from the spine; if not, give it another few minutes.

When it is done, peel back the skin and you should, starting from the back, be able to lift the whole side away from the bones. The spine can then be removed, bringing the ribs with it. The other side is then easily seperated from the skin on the underside.

There is a mathematical formula here that states that Clay's factor of taste (Fc/t) is a function of the cube of the time in minutes from the point where you clonk the trout on the head to the exact time the trout is finished cooking.

Years ago I used to fish a Natal lake where they had gutting points around the water.

You caught your trout, clonked it, cleaned it and cooked it in tin foil over an ironwood BBQ.

I have never tasted better trout in my life.

NEVER NEVER NEVER overcook a trout. If you do it WILL taste dry and insipid.

Use only sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to season it.

Do it right with a quality fish and you will have a meal fit for a king. Trout is one of the healthiest of all fish. It is high in Omega 3 and protein.

My quack calls it heart food.

I was fortunate enought to be taken to catch Char in wonderful clear lakes in Norway. Catch them, gut them, fill the inside with sour cream, wrap in foil and cook at the edge of a wood fire, turning once. Add a little salt - wonderful but not sure they remained heart food with all that sour cream.

Bob
I know you caught your fish in clear water but this may be of interest. I grew up fishing a cheshire stream - flowing through rich pasture land. It was always muddy after rainfall. Catch a fish in this water and it tasted muddy when you ate it. Wait and after a few days of clear running the flavour of any fish you caught was much better. Something my dear Mum taught me and she came from the lake district so it seems even brief spells of muddy water have the effect, as that's what she would have been familiar with as Grandad was an angler, it's not just the prolonged muddy water of lowland streams.

here are a couple of things to try to remove the earthy taste:

you could marinate the fish (after its been cleaned and filleted)in 1 1/4 salted water for a few hours prior to cooking to draw out the taste then add some pepper to the water and steam the fish

or you could poach the fillets in milk with a little salt/pepper.the milk will draw out the earthy taste its best with standard milk or sterilised milk and you could add a little corn flour and white wine to make a sauce and serve with boiled new potatoes and green beans and sweatcorn

That sounds like a nice recipe Chavender.

I used to fish a lot with a guy called Denis Murphy. He was the CEO of one of the largest mining equipment supply companies in SA.

During 1987 I spent a week fishing with Denis in the KwaZulu Natal Drakensberg, where the might Umzimkulu river flows down through dolomite to the Natal Midlands.

This river is full of wild rainbows.

We caught several trout that week and Denis did the cooking. He used a mixture of dill, Cointreu (I've forgotten how to spell it) and fresh farm butter to fry the trout in. The fish were split right down the backbone like kippers.

The liqueur is thrown in, in the final stages of cooking, and then flamed off.

Served with salad, boiled sweet potatoes and a good SA Chardonnay, they were fantastic.

People who tell me they don't like trout, have probably only eaten those from Pom supermarkets or Pom restaurants.

I hate to say it, but your average Pom has no idea on how to cook a trout.

To cook a trout properly demands love and delicacy, just the same as cooking a good steak. A French friend of mine once told me that the British - particularly the Scottish, produce some of the finest beef in the world. Yet they are the best at destroying it when they cook it.

Too right Ron ,but we're learning.
I think I've sussed the trout out though.
Get a grill pan as hot as possible,put in your trout fillet,skin side down,salt & pepper the flesh.
When the skin is darkened and crispy put the pan in a warm oven and let it finish off,dont turn the fish over.
Once the protein starts to show on the flesh(white gunge sorry!)plate up with boiled Jersey Royals and steamed broccali and good English butter.
Simple.

I like to grill my trout fillets after sprinkling on some garlic salt, fresh black pepper and some oregano. Superb!

If I have to cook a whole fish, then it's normally wrapped in foil again with just some seasoning and a smidgeon or two of white wine.

The other belter with any leftover fish is to make fishcakes. Equal amounts of fish and cold mashed potato's, mix them together well, adding one beaten egg, two teaspoons of mustard and some seasoning. Form into fish cake shapes, coat in flour then fry them off till golden brown.

Most excellent!!!!!!

What I have cooked on odd occasions is "Trout Bubble and Squeak"

Cook a couple of rainbows until nearly done. Allow to cool. Flake all the flesh and combine with cold mashed spuds mixed with cooked cabbage, carrot and chopped Spanish onion.

Put in sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, a good bunch of chopped dill and loads of fresh chopped parsley.

Form into hamburger sized patties and fry until brown.

Absolutely wonderfull with a good dry Cape Reisling and a tossed mediterranian style salad.

Thanks for all the advise and recipes guys.

I'm sure Dave Bruce is right about fishing after recent rainfall. Although the lake was clear, I have seen it clearer and it had been raining earlier.

I always gut and top and tail fish as soon as I get home, or earlier if possible. Although I am quite new to fly fishing I have done a lot of sea fishing and have cleaned everything from a 12oz mackerel through 25lb cod, to a 70lb conger. Mackerel cooked on the boat, in a frying pan with nothing added not even any oil and eaten with just crusty bread and proper full fat heart attack butter is the best for me.

I shall be trying Chavender's recipe, thats sounds promising.

Ron, what's salad?

An essential part of any meal.

Just as is a pound of dried figs a day.

I also like about 10 prunes with my porridge in the morning.

It keeps you regular.

Aah, its a type of best bitter then Ron, I can relate to that. I thought for a minute it might have been some sort of new food fad. Should have known better really!

Try this one. Gently fry fillets in a little butter, remove and keep warm. Add sliced mushrooms to pan, add some cream and a good slug of Pernod. Cook the mushrooms and sauce quickly, return the fillets for a short while. Enjoy, and think of some poor sod eating muesli.

Hopefully I wont come over as too much of a purist here; but there's an easy answer to avoid eating rotten tasting Trout.

Only eat wild Brown Trout from rivers or natural deep lakes where they thrive naturally.

Reared Rainbow Trout are akin to the RATFISH of overstocked muddy Carp holes.

No wonder they taste like sh*t.

its not clotted blood down the spine its the kidney and does need removing

You lot have got it all wrong...get yourselves a son who is a fully qualified cordon bleu chef. You can't beat it...

They fillet them and grill with oranges or lime up here. Bizarre but popular.

Can't say I really like the taste, especially farmed rainbows. I had a surplus of them I accidentally caught while piking somewhere a few years back.

They lived in a fairly clear lake and were over-wintered. Minging.

Take an 8" brownie, gut & clean, put a 1/2 oz of salted butter in your blisteringly hot, purloined from your mum, biscuit tin lid, place on open campfire on the gravel banks of the River Ae from whence the fish was taken during the previous minutes, fry, turning the fish often for about 3 minutes, eat (salted to taste) with fingers and clasp knife, realise you will never in your life taste better fish (this takes about 40 years) ................