Robs Whole Fish
Ingredients
- 1-2 pound whole Icy Waters Charr
- 1/2 pound of butter (Butter makes everything better)
- 1 whole lemon
- Fresh dill
- 1 cup white wine
- Tin foil
It’s Effing Rob here again and I have an Easy as Eff whole fish recipe for you! Growing up on Vancouver Island we often caught wild pacific salmon. If we were entertaining, my go to for a whole fish was salmon on the BBQ. I’ve since applied this recipe to many other fish including Icy Waters Charr from Whitehorse, Yukon. As you know, I am a simple man with no culinary training and a passion for cooking.
Yield: Serves 2-6 (I suggest an average of 3/4 pounds of whole fish per person
Directions
- Wipe fish and rinse belly. Leave the head on…. Charr have a thin layer of slime to protect them. Don’t worry, this is totally normal.
- Preheat oven or BBQ to 400F.
- Tear 2 sheets of tinfoil 4 inches longer then the fish and place each piece of tinfoil on top of each other. I use double tinfoil as I find it makes it stronger and helps protect the fish from burning when placed on the BBQ.
- Lay fish in the center of the tinfoil.
- Slice lemon and rinse dill.
- Take a few lemon slices and stuff them in the belly along with some dill. Leave the dill whole as it’s just for flavour.
- Take a couple cubes of the butter and stuff them in the belly too. Again, butter makes everything better.
- Start folding in the tinfoil to create a boat before you pour in the cheap white wine.
- Once the wine is added, fold over the tinfoil to create a seal and to help steam the fish.
- For this 1-2 pound Icy Waters Charr you’ll likely need 20 minutes but you are also shooting for an internal temperature of 130F in the thickest part of the fish.
- These fish are fatty which makes cooking them very forgiving.
- Once cooked, open the tinfoil and then the skin will scrape off with a butter knife and the meat will lift off the spine with a spatula.
- Once you’ve taken the meat off one side, pull the spine out from the tail end and the underside is free to scoop.
- Optional: After scraping the skin, chill in the fridge and recreate scales on the side for presentation with sliced cucumber. Think rounds of baby cucumbers layered to look like scales. This can be done ahead of time and served cold.
- Double Optional: Add a googly eye after cooking is complete lol.
- Special Note: Pin bones are the little bones that we all hate in salmon. They are located in the top loin, about 1/4 down from the top going in a line from just behind the head for a few inches towards the tail. Total length of pinbones is about the total length of fish divided by 3.
