Wife got some fresh trout filets today when she dropped off our boy with friends at the lake.

What is everyone's go-to recipe and way of preparing trout?

I have way more experience with pike and walleye and some with perch.

We normally gut them, scrape scales, cut head and fins off. Little butter, lemon, fresh dill, ground black pepper in the cavity. Wrap in aluminum foil and cook in the coals in the wood stove, grill or fire pit.

Probably my least favorite fish to eat though.

My trout cooking experience is similar.

We would fill the body cavity with butter and then liberal application of lemon pepper. Wrap in foil and throw on the grill. Been a lot of years since I was in college where we had trout regularly.

We have a bag of filets and wondering what everyone's best suggestions would be???

Eats them raw…..

I like it smoked, stripped off the bone and mixed with mayo, chopped onion, capers, old bay, whatever your flavor and made into a dip for crackers.

Gut and remove the gills and head. Simply dust in corn meal and pan fry. Salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon.

Bone the fish AFTER you pan fry.

Grab the tail and use a fork on the underside to remove one filet from tail to head. Flip and repeat. You’ll end up holding the tail and complete skeleton

What rcamuglia said!

I was going to smoke some one year.

Starved oxygen smoker does not work well at 9,000 ft I found out.
Not enough oxygen to keep it going and I gave up after one try.!

I love to eat trout when I'm starving to death.

Cut them in chunks.....and use for catfish bait..

[video:youtube]https://youtube.com/shorts/IPf4YpJKMs8?feature=share[/video]

Yes, Sir, that's the way my Daddy always did it.

I've raised a few trout in my life....... one favorite is simply broiled with olive oil, garlic and a lime pepper seasoning.


The best is in a trout chowder.

Ok , since it’s already in filets 😀 you can skip the beheading and gutting .
Big springs seasoned flour is your pal .
Flip the filets in it a couple times ,
Melt about 1-2” deep of butter .
Depending on how thick your filets are .
Drop your filets in pan of butter on medium heat and fry till however crispy you like your breading .
Mmm mmm good in the morning with some toast and eggs .
Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about .
Kenneth

Only trout that I actually “liked” was these football size brookies that we caught in the Marble Mountain wilderness by the Oregon border…. Bright pink meat…. They were excellent…. Disclaimer…. We were also consuming large volumes of powdered Gatorade and vodka, ymmv 👍🏻

Yep, I’ve had brookies from the Marble Mountains in CA to The Winds in WY and they are the best. Of course, they are a char and not a true trout. I’ve not found much you can do to a hatchery rainbow to make it very palatable to me.

Swap them for Crappie or Catfish- - - - -if you can find somebody dumb enough to trade that way!

Johnny's seasoning and pan fry in a bit of bacon grease.

I love trout.

Even mossy pond summer trout.

Roll them in flour and pan fry

Trout start tasting similar to shyte when it gets warm out, ice fished Trout is the best.
Otherwise,, its roll them in flour, salt+pepper, fry in butter.

We don't freeze them anymore as it seems the longer they are out of water the worse they taste, canning is best imo.

For me trout need come from cold, clean water. Cooked fresh, AKA not frozen. Fish that aren’t to big=less than 18”. Now the recipe, salt,pepper,butter and BBQ!!!!

So you put bbq sauce on your trout to make them edible?

Dredge in a little seasoned flour and fry in grease and or butter.

Mostly if I keep trout it’s for bait. Halibut seem to like it. Dogfish definitely like it. Lol.
I’ll keep a little cold stream trout for eating on occasion.

For me no. cooked on the BBQ!! With the heads on so you can eat the cheeks.

fry 'm in bacon grease if that's your goal....

Here's my trout chowder recipe, try it, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Works fine with salmon, too.

2 cups of onions.
4 oz bacon
1 t thyme
1 t tarragon
3 bay leaves
2 lbs potatoes
1.5 lb trout fillets, skinless, boneless
2 T butter
4 cups chicken broth (or fish stock)
1 1/2 cups cream
salt
pepper


Directions:

Dice the onions, potatoes, bacon.

Cook bacon in stock pot until brown. Add onions, butter, bay leaves, tarragon and thyme. Stir and simmer until onions are translucent.

Add potatoes and broth, and enough water to cover taters if needed. Boil for 15 minutes. Add the trout, boil for 10 more minutes. Turn off heat, and add the cream, and salt and pepper to taste.

For fry pan or grill, I usually put just enough bacon grease or butter down to keep it from sticking, cook fairly hot 'til the meat inside along the backbone changes color .. oh, wait .. you said fillets, so that won't work. Anyway, get it up to 145 degrees per the cookbook. For salmon fillets, that's about 20 minutes at 400 degrees with a convection oven. Trout, being thinner, will cook quicker. Sometimes adding a touch of butter after it is cooked adds good flavor. Season with sea salt and black pepper.

Tom

Bait.

I like trout. Keep it simple. filets in aluminum foil. Butter, onion, paprika. Flip on the grill ever 5 minutes. Should be ready in 20. Delicious.

Only way yo turn trout into something edible: Crab bait.

Hot and fast in seasoned cornmeal, once a year, real cold water, gotta be good fish or 🤮🤮

Great thread.



For identifying Long John Silvers customers


😂😂😂

Filet them and coat with Lawrey's Carne Asada seasoning. Wrap in foil with a little butter and put them on the grill.

Some Gifford Pinchot trout, blue lake, wobbly, walupt, streams up there ain’t bad, lowland stockers or other , yep, garbage. 👊🏻

I will eat a native trout like it's my job, from the colder the water the better! The stockers will end up as sandwich spread!

Rainbows out of Diamond Lake are as pink as salmon and good eating. Lots of freshwater shrimp for them to feed on.

They're about 5th on my list of fish to eat, but certainly not trash.

The only freshwater fish I’ll keep landlocked salmon and walleye.

Probably one of the best seen here, hit the water seconds after the pic was snapped, nice having a cooler full of springers! 👍👊🏻



Always feels good puttin one back. 🤘

It is really hard to find real, good trout. I'm not in the intermountain west anymore, so they're all pellet heads, except for the few native brookies you may happen upon. And all of those natives get released, by me anyway.

On one trip to Canada, we caught a bunch of rainbows in an ice-cold lake. Very orange/pink meat on them and they were excellent. Salt, pepper, and butter along with onions, green peppers, and garlic inside the cleaned and headless body. Wonderful eating, those.

As mentioned above, fresh trout from a clear, cold lake or stream are best for sure.

Learn how to filet if you don't already know how... eating a good filet allows you to focus more on enjoying the meat vs picking through it for bones! Just my opinion though!!!

Because of their oil content, trout do lend themselves to smoking which isn't very hard and makes for a nice meal/snack. I have a few friends that even bottle/can them like red or pink salmon which takes care of the bones, too.

My favorite, however, is to bread the filets in a cornmeal/flour batter seasoned with pepper and seasoned salt of some variety or a good beer batter and fry them up in butter or oil. They taste great warm in a traditional meal or also taste great "cold" out of the refrigerator! I use a cold beer battered filet to make a great sandwich with a little Miracle Whip, cheese, dill pickles, tomato and thin onion slice on bread... delectable!

A simple filet, fried in the pan by itself, seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice is good too if you insist on being healthy!

As with most fish, wild game, etc., meat freshness and care before the meal are critical.

Enjoy!

My thoughts exactly!

Fresh from a stream in the Sierras or high mountains of your choice, 6"-8" long, gutted, heads on, shaken in a bag with bisquick and seasonings, fried in leftover bacon grease or if not enough grease to fry, spread some on some foil and wrap the fish and put it in the coals.

I really don't care for trout. As a kid, I ate tons of them. Best way in my opinion is to roll them in flour, salt+pepper, fry in butter.

Oh my goodness.....a fish that tastes like fish?


How terrible!

Catch and release, too many small bones for me.

Just out of the water. Gutted, salt and lemon pepper in cavity.
Skewered on willow and cooked over a small wood fire.

Agree with others that trout don't seem to refrigerate or freeze well and brookies are much better than bows or browns.

We call them mountain carp, they are for tourists and never kept. The few I have eaten years ago were seasoned and fried in oil. Lemon pepper, garlic, salt you name it, doesn't really matter. Roll them in flour or pancake mix then fry.

I've had them out of a mountain stream, and they are still underwhelming. Trout must taste better to some when they are really hungry or exhausted on a camping or hiking trip.
About the only way I've found to make them palatable is to smoke them which is hard to do right to get all the bones to release together and slip out. I've smoked it then canned it to see if that helped. It didn't. They aren't gross tasting per se, but they aren't good either. Good luck

Ernest Hemingway approves this message......

If at home, and not stream side, trout almondine.

Exactly this except I like cut 50/50 with corn meal.

Let me guess: rainbow trout, 10-11" long, from a stream that's stocked regularly? Just about every stocker I've eaten has tasted muddy, which is not surprising because they eat Purina Trout Chow.

Wild trout are a different animal altogether.

Best recipe I've had was cooked in foil in the campfire coals. We didn't have butter or oil so we wrapped them in thin sliced salami, which cooked up real crisp and was delicious. These were wild cutthroats out of a mountain lake.

Not even then.

Damn tough crowd here.

Ended up pan frying after rolling in some flour and seasoning. Used bacon grease to fry.

They were really good. Not walleye or winter perch good. But tasted really good.Came out of a lake up by YNP yesterday so water is still pretty cold there

I used to release all of them to get bigger except for a few 5# browns to mount. Now the native brookies around me have a problem, they are absolutely delicious compared to the browns. I leave the head and fins on unless they don’t fit in the pan. I love eating the fins like little chips. As far as cooking them, flour salt pepper fried in butter maybe some lemon at the table. My favorite fish to eat hands down. I’d trade ten walleyes for a fresh brookie.

Used to catch a lot of trout in mountain lakes on backpacking trips. Salt and pepper, butter if you have it, wrapped in foil on the fire was always good. I've grilled some out of the local reservoirs here and they seem to be strong flavored so usually smoke them anymore. I did one of the locally caught ones with S&P, butter, sliced red onion and lime slices wrapped in foil in the oven. I thought that combo turned out better than any I can remember. I've pan fried a bunch in the past as well but that doesn't appeal to me as much these days.

Since they are filleted, blackened, Cajun style.

Not only that, they have BONES in them too!

We didn't bring the extra weight of cornmeal on 9 day backpacking trips. Bisquick was used for dumplings on top of Mountain House stews, pancakes to go with the DAK canned bacon (used the empty can to store the bacon grease in for later cooking of the trout) and biscuits of course.

At home, cornmeal makes for a nice touch though.

I can't believe anyone would eat the stupid things!


Personally...I think Walleye is boring as hell.

This

We used to catch them out of farm ponds all the time.

Build a fire, and cook them on a stick or folded in half in pop can or a chili can.

My buddy carried a bottle of mesquite (choo choo!) smoked salt...which was good on the trout.


A friend of ours slathers them in yellow mustard before cooking.


When we catch them we just fry them on the spot. Eats em as we catches em.

Never had a fillet of trout. Prefer heads on so I can eat the cheek meat.

#1 Must be wild... no planters
#2 Must be from clear cold water
#3 Must eat soon after being caught
#4 Ideally while camping where everything taste better.

A little butter and lemon pepper, cooked like this.


Once did a backpack trip into the Beartooth mountains with nothing but snacks for lunch and minute rice.... used this basket cooker and filled it with brookies, didn't go hungry..
Also have done multi day float trips with the same... but had a pack of hotdogs in the cooler... just in case

You fuggers would be better off going to Red Lobster.


Jeebus.


Buncha women

I must be part Eskimo too.

I didn't know people ate them creek slicks, damn!

Honorary Membership for sure!

I have eaten them lots of different ways and like them ok.
The best I ever had were brookies I caught in a little stream while it was snowing on a Hunting trip. I gilled and gutted them as I caught them and put them in the snow. Pan fried them in bacon grease.
Grew up eating rainbows. Dad floured them and seasoned with salt and pepper. Sauteed them in lemon butter.
I have smoked quite a few and those are good for big trout.
My wife likes to cover them up with lemon pepper and grill on a gas grill.
My wife caught a big rainbow last summer and I filleted it like a salmon and pulled all the pin bones. Cut it up like a salmon and cooked it on charcoal on cedar planks. It was really good.

Thanks.

I can see myself trying muktuk or seal but I'm not sure about stink head or stink eggs.

Maybe if I covered them up with some bierkaese or limburger to hide the smell?

On a nice Ritz cracker perhaps?

Or better yet, some pilot bread!

I like June-caught trout after they’ve spent two or three years in the ocean. Eight, maybe ten pounders.





P

I've always liked trout as simple as possible. Over a fire or in a skillet with a little butter and just a bit of salt and pepper.

Fresh from cold water, cooked hot and fast.

Some of the best I've had were taken from a cold stream just south of Glacier Park, when I was helping an outfitter buddy guide three Japanese guys on a summer horsepack trip. As we caught some cutbows on flies, one of the Japanese guys (the one who couldn't speak much English) would skewer the trout through the vent to the mouth on a willow branch, season it with a mix he brought along, and cook it carefully over an open fire until the still-firm flesh could be easily stripped off the outside--including the cheeks. He kept saying, "Teriyaki! Teriyaki!" and grinning. The word basically means grilled in Japanese--but whatever, it was great!

When I'd go ty o Quetico every year Lakers were always a nice change up from the usual walleye. I actually like fish, so l clean whatever else for myself.

Lemons, onions and some Lemon pepper over the fire until the skin separates from the meat. Foil, cast iron or whatever to steam them a bit.

Yeah, steelhead is delicious.

Canyon Ferry blackened rainbow fillets are excellent.

Crying

Only ever ate them pan fried when younger, heads and tails off with skins on. Didn't like them.

Recently had them filleted and deep fried right out of the water, pretty good. Buddy smokes them with apple wood with skin on and they are amazing.

Been told the skin is what gives them the fishy taste, idk

Fish for Steelhead every year and my friends like them smoked, can't stand them personally.

The darn things are already oily. Frying them is too much oil. Hatchery trout should only be used for fertilizer.
IMHO.

Cooked up another bunch the next day.Similar in bacon grease. Even though they had been refrigerated over night, they were still pretty dang good. Light flavor. Not oily.

Had a couple filets left so I mixed up some heavy beer batter. Cooked these in veg oil. Really quite good. Absolutely nothing wrong with these. Believe I had mostly browns with a could bows.

These came out of Quake Lake or Hebgen though, so the water is still pretty cold.

I like trout pretty well. Small ones get grilled whole

Filets, like Tarkio is talking about, I fry in seasoned corn meal. I greatly prefer corn meal to flour.

Yeah trout pretty much sucks. Nice to know i am not alone. Best I can remember was some brook trout out of a high elevation lake. For me it’s halibut, walleye and channel cat only. Of course fish sticks kinda don’t count but are pollack and that is a great tasting fish too.

Marinated in kiefer helps pull the funk outta them filets.


I layer citrus and onion slices wrap them in tin foil grill them lots of pepper

I don't cook it often but I love fresh trout, fried/tin foil/broiled. The simpler the seasoning the better-salt pepper butter lemon. Sometimes dill.

Best recipe is catch and release

Bastid!

I like that too.

When I do keep a few trout crushed cornflakes crumbs for breading with black pepper and grilled is my go to way to cook them. A lot of people love trout but I’m not a big fan I’d rather have fried perch or walleye.

Get some red snapper from your seafood market, and feed the freshwater fish to the cats.

Grilled swordfish steaks are pretty damn good too. I’ll have to try snapper sometime.

I've wondered if some guys who don't like trout is because they catch them in muddy or brackish water. There are several lakes here that have great trout fishing but once the algae bloom is in the lake after about June 1, the fish taste like crud and are basically inedible. However, at the same time if you catch fish a few miles away in the clear mountain streams they are great for eating....

Bob

I think the main problem is these guys put ketchup on their Filet O Fish and Gortons fish sticks.

Only when we run outta tartar.

I have never seen so many people who disliked trout. Maybe you guys are eating stocked fish? Native brook trout are the best.

I likes to dip my fries in the MacDonald tartar sauce.

Exactly. There's a reason the injuns put 'em in the hole when plantin' corn.

I used to think I disliked trout because we ate so many when I was growing up.... was told by my dad, you catch and keep your limit... after I grew up I kept none for 30 yrs.
Now I keep a few to eat and actually enjoy them.
Now walleye, perch, crappie, ling cod, rock cod, halibut... that is good fish!

I shouldn't have been so surprised to learn that most here can't get along without two daily showers and fresh satin sheets.

I bet most of you put on rubber gloves to make meatballs or clean toilets.



Triple sheesh.

I am going to start calling you guys Massengillers.

I have nightmares of being forced to eat that crap when I was a kid. Catholic issues from the olden days. Give me some tuna noodle caserole or baked mac and cheese on Friday instead of that nasty stuff they tried to pass of as good to eat.

Or ....................................give me a trout to cook.

Stocked trout isn’t very good. Wild trout is very good. Simply cooked. Pan fried preferred.

Those ones in your last sentence..............I like 'em too, but they...............hardly even taste like fish.

Talk about eating too many when younger. Best friend and I, and our younger bros, would ride the 7 miles or so on our bikes to a local city reservoir in SoCal and catch limits (or more, statute of limitations over by now) of planted trout. Best friend's dad bought our bait, big block of Velveeta cheese and jars of Pautzke's salmon eggs. His family had 9 kids (Catholics too, of course) to feed and every weekend they'd end up with limits on Sat and Sun from our trips. Our family only had 5 kids, so sometime his family got donated a few of our fish. Was a hoot, my little sister, maybe 4-5 years old at the time, loved to watch me clean them and pick through the guts to see what they were eating!

Planters hold little appeal now, but back then, helping feed the family while having fun was a good thing.

You coming over this summer?

I'm going to try to get to a couple of places in the Warners.

As many have said wild trout from cold water is a fine meal.

I prefer to fillet, skin and remove Y bones.

Salt and pepper in a pan with butter.

Just bring some foil on our pack trips. Use a stick if no foil. Gut, salt and pepper, wrap in foil and cook on the coals. If you plan ahead and bring an onion and lemon you are a master chef. It's all good when you're a day or two away from the nearest road. You can bake them that way at home in the oven. Big trout (over 4 lbs) get smoked. Brine for a few days first. The big eagle lake rainbows and lake trout are too fatty unless smoked and dried a little.

Brined. Smoked. Pulled. And then used in trout rangoons, chowders, or dips.

I like the Adirondack native brook trout out of cold mountain streams. I gut, remove gills, salt and pepper and fry in butter.

Gut them, cut the heads off, put them in the pan and fry. I generally season with Lawry's seasoned salt which I carry in the pack. Most of what we have are cutthroats and dolly varden. I like whitefish too but you have to scale them. One of the best tasting meals I had was comprised of one trout, one grayling, and a spruce grouse, all fried together in butter. This was at the end of a twelve hour day carrying a heavy pack, mind you, and I probably could have cooked an old boot and been pretty happy with it. GD

In our family it was


"wazza mata, youa craze"

Scaled, skin on, over coals in a basket or on a non-stick grate until the skin crinkles like burnet paper. Butter, salt, pepper ofc, dill and garlic optional.

Yeah I was surprised too. Maybe they're eating lake trout, I don't know since I've never had it. Trout caught from mountain streams and rivers is delecious.