I've been cooking fish lately in my outside kitchen. A nice piece of halibut the other night and yellow fin tuna steaks tonight. I made a marinade of soy, teriyaki, olive oil, garlic and a little ginger. Five minutes a side on high heat and then reduced heat for another five, a glorious medium was the result. I use copper grill mats over the grates. This keeps the thing from falling apart. Suggestions for fish to grill beyond sword, tuna and halibut? pl
If you can get it fresh (really fresh), bluefish and mackerel are great on the outdoor grill. They are strongly flavored and oily, so outdoor grilling is better.
Redfish (drum) on the halfshell. Fillet but don’t scale, rub Cajun seasoning, butter and lemon on the meat side. Grill scale side down until the meat is white, turn meat side to the fire and brown. Scoop the meat out an enjoy.
Mackerel. I can’t recommend this fish strongly enough. It’s delicious grilled. Long ago my family caught a mess of them and grilled them right on the beach on Prince Edward Island. They were also a Fest food throughout Bavaria, grilled on a stick and seasoned just right. You can’t go wrong with mackerel.
Salmon
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/12720/grilled-salmon-i/
red snapper or branzino. Whole fish in a grilling basket. stay away from too much swordfish.
Mahi-mahi caught earlier in the day marinated in Italian salad dressing and grilled over wood charcoal while the lads clean the boat is hard to beat.
Salmon!
Salmon
Looks Very Good..I will bring the Wine..Side Dishes..? A Friend paid 33 dollars a Pound for Copper Rive King Salmon..Hope You stay Dry up there..Our Best to Your Family..Cheers
You can grill any ole fish, for the best taste – just grill them whole, head and all.
Salmon. Awesome when grilled. Wahoo and opah if you can find them.
Striped bass grills well. Bluefish can be good if done right.
Mackerel is very oily so it works well bbq’ed. Pompano is good too, though both might not be as available on the east coast.
Sir
I grill frequently. Suggest salmon as well as whole Red Snapper, Sea Bass, Sardines and Mackerel.
I’m very fond of shark. Works well on the grill.
Sockeye salmon and perhaps some other kinds of wild-caught salmon to see how they compare to the sockeye?
Mahi-Mahi (dolphinfish) and Mako (shark)
Mackerel, salmon.
Don’t have an idea about grilling fish since I never do that, but an idea about how to prepare a fish for the oven.
I love gilt-head breams, if possible I buy a complete one, gutted. I usually prepare it ‘a student’s way’ so to speak:
I have the fish ‘sit’ with the gut on onions, garlic and ginger, sometimes with fresh rosemary. Over the fish I put a little olive oil, sometimes lemon juice, pepper and salt and bake then them slowly in the oven under a aluminium foil ‘roof’. I tend to surround the fish ‘under the hat’ with potatoe and onion or sweet pepper slices, sometimes lemon slices.
The ‘hat’ also protects it (and you) from the fish getting dark and dry if … you’re interupted by the phone. It also keeps the fish juicy.
When it’s done it is rather easy to peel off the skin, saving the hassle of de-scaling the fish, and once you’ve learned the anatomy of the fish and the grates it is rather easy to cut the fish while avoiding them.
I forgot the weight, but one ‘up to 30 cm fish’ is enough for two persons.
Quite tasty, (and if you don’t mind the fish still having a head and tail on the plate, it IMO looks good also).
I worked at a place on the dock in Montauk when I was 19. Blackened Mako was my favorite and holds up on the grill better than Tuna/Sword. Swordfish meat with a with a light orange hue is excellent; it’s an indication that their diet is mostly shrimp and the taste comes through.
Sir;
A favourite of the wife is flounder. She likes to bake it in the oven, the whole fish, gutted of course. For outdoor grilling, I would imagine that an old fashioned fireside toast press would do to keep the dish relatively intact. I have heard that the halves of the fish are also grillable.
When we lived on the Gulf Coast we would go to the Waveland, Mississippi beach during the full of the moon and gig flounder as they came up to the shoreline.
There was a Golden Age.
Small fish is a lot better for your health, check out the spanish word espeto, I leave you a google images link, an old Mediterranean way of cooking fish, skewed on bamboo cane and grilled on olive tree wood right on the sand of the beach were it was caught. Cheers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=espeto&client=firefox-b-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTy–k_rvkAhUN8hQKHb0QDYMQ_AUIEigB&biw=1295&bih=617
Salmon, trout and mackerel, maybe herring if you can get it over there, would sit well with those you have already eaten.
wild caught NOT farm raised salmon steaks, if you’re feeling flush large sea scallops and i like but you might not grilled octopus on wood skewers (find a mediterranean french recipe)…bon apetit
Salmon is great on the grill. I marinate mine in a marinade of:
Soy/Tamari
Water
Worcestershire
White Wine
Honey
chopped onions
Spices
Use water and wine to adjust taste to your liking. Be careful not to let the marinade be too salty
Salmon grills nicely. I’ve found that a nice wild caught Cod can actually be the best bang for my buck when it’s fresh.
But I would argue you’re already enjoying the best with that Halibut 🙂
Never tried Hammerhead. My recommend was based on my experience with Thresher shark. It does not have a strong flavor, admittedly, but cooked right is quite tasty.
Halibut is wonderful. I once had the best fish in my life (so far) when a friend in Hamburg made for us halibut he had fished himself in the Nordsee from a friend’s cutter – directly put on ice after fished. The fish was a dream.
To the fish there were baked onions and potatoes, and as a drink to the dinner there was a lot of … aquavit.
As a fisher the good man is tough, even going up to northern Denmark in the winter, fishing with a fishing rod while standing to the hip in the usually very cold water and/or rain.
BillH
When i was with the 8th SFGA in the former Canal Zone, we caught small hammerheads in Gatun Lake (pretty brackish from the Canal effluents) and cooked them on the usual round Weber charcoal grills, pulled from the water, killed, gutted and directly onto the grill. Very tasty.
CP
Was first introduced to grilled halibut at a Boston Italian seafood resto called Dini’s Seafood Grill on Tremont I believe across the street from the Old Granary Burying Ground. Dini’s was haunted in afternoon by blue-white haired old Irish ladies eating fish and drinking Manhattans. BTW, one of my ancestors is buried in that cemetery along with Sam Adams and a few kindred spirits.
Cut into steaks rather than fillets have worked better for me. Often breaks at the ‘foot’ of the steak but still more manageable.
Fish fiend here. While I don’t do much grilling, I like to use the more short-lived species such as various sardines and mackerel, because they have a lower rate of bio-accumulation of heavy metals and various other junk floating around in increasing concentrations in our oceans.
Tuna is notoriously bad in that respect, so the maturity and source region of the fish is critically important. These are fish that can live up to 30 years.
Lightly seasoned, grilled, and eaten with the fine bone structure for that extra texture. You’ll get a high concentration of those fish oils with little or none of the by-products of human heavy industry.
https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/grilled-sardines-with-mint-and-almonds
artic char. better than salmon for those who don’t go for the metallic bite of salmon you get sometimes. holds up to the grill and hard to overcook.
More salmon–
We cook salmon steaks in Lodge cast iron with a self basting lid. Low to medium heat (electric burner).
Melt butter (we use unsalted) in pan. Sprinkle some Dean’s Natural Grill brand ‘Lemon Seafood’ seasoning in the butter. Lay in steaks and sprinkle on a bit more Dean’s. Cook for 7 minutes a side. Done.
We make Jasmine white rice to go with. I put some Teriyaki sauce on my rice, and a dab of this —
https://www.mccormick.com/spices-and-flavors/seafood/sauces-and-marinades/lemon-butter-dill-seafood-sauce
on my salmon. Oh, my. Some may say that I am drowning perfectly good salmon in all those flavors. I’m not. It is just one of my absolute favorite flavor combinations.
Two thoughts in addition to what I read above. One, try grilling sea bream, also called daurade, John Dory, or in France St. Pierre. it has a excellent combination of flavor and texture. I grill the whole fish with the 10 minute rule and stuff it with lemon and/or rosemary. Two, for the sea bream of halibut or similar white fish that you’re not marinating, the Greeks have a great sauce called ladelemono made from olive oil and lemons. One other garnish I like for white fish is a ‘green olive spread.’ Dalmatia sauces makes a very good one. (I have no financial interest.) https://dalmatiaspreads.com/collections/our-products/products/green-olive-spread
I’ll eat whatever she orders: https://www.outdoorhub.com/stories/2018/07/24/10-best-tasting-wild-fish-according-internet/ Also, this guy seems to know a thing or two about fish: https://brobible.com/life/article/best-tasting-fish-in-the-world-ranked/
I also used to sometimes fry salmon in a pan at home. It would be Copper River sockeye salmon when that was available in the Krogers where I did my shopping at. I would get olive oil in the pan almost smoking hot and then put the salmon in for fairly quick crusty-surface fry on one side and then semi-quick fry on the other side, being careful to allow inside to remain somewhat rare though not raw.
One time I tried a very interesting flavor combination by accident. I had left a big piece of salmon in fridge longer than intended, about a week.
When I circled around to it and opened the package, it smelled somewhat rotten. But I washed the surface layer of bacterial bio-film slime off it and kept washing till I could feel nothing. A faint odor of sharp decay remained, but only faintly.
When fried, the odor of decay was gone but the odor of salmon itself seemed somehow richer. The basic salmon taste was still there, with some nutty flavors and a taste of smelly-in-a-good-way cheese layered over that.
I have never tried doing that on purpose, but perhaps I someday may.
Cedar planked sockeye salmon.
If you are eating fish often, do your research on their mercury levels And don’t use google, use DuckDuckGo….
Seabass – it has a very delicate wonderful flavor. Since we have lots of bay leaf trees on our properties, after drying, salting and peppering the fish, I cover both side with Bay leaf in the wire grilling holder and then drizzle olive oil on its top surface (Skin down until almost done when I give it a flip for about 3 minutes to sear the top.
Modification is to add some chili pepper, but chili doesn’t agree with the wife….
Trout on the barbeque, smoked trout when in the hills of NE Hungary
Lots of great suggestions here. Especially attractive ideas from confused ponderer and unhinged citizen.
My tuppenceworth? (2 cents)
grilled hake recipe
Hake is king of the cod family in Spanish cuisine. Laughably cheap elsewhere, it has the place of honour on the tables of the gastronomic clubs in the Basque Country.
My guess is that far too little fish is eaten by folks whose ancestors probably migrated a few miles a year along coastlines for much of the time preceding written records.
A tool that will greatly help your fish grilling is a ‚fish spatula‘ or „fish turner.“ It is thin and curved which allows you to test if the fish is ready to turn and to slide under when ready. Oxo makes a good one.
Yesterday I was at one of the food stores I sometimes go to. And I asked the man at the fish-and-meat counter about how the different kinds of salmon ranked for taste. He went and got “someone who knows” to answer my question.
And this is the answer I got . . .
Sockeye salmon is the very strongest tasting salmon. I think I remember that king salmon comes after that and coho salmon after that and chinook salmon after that. But I know that sockeye salmon is ranked first for strongest taste.
There is an interesting complication. The Copper River is a more difficult river for the salmon to fight their way up than are any of the other rivers. So the salmon who make the Copper River run eat heavier while still at sea so as to lay in more body fat to give them the more power they need to fight their way up the Copper River to the spawning grounds. So Copper River sockeye salmon AND Copper River king salmon will be both fattier and more fat-rich than sockeye and king from the other river runs. The more fat in the Copper River salmon will “dilute” the meat-taste and flavor just a little bit and tone the taste and flavor down from “strong” to “rich”. And the fat brings a taste and flavor and mouthfeel all its own. This makes the Copper River salmons so very prized and demanded, and so much more expensive than the same two species of salmon from the other river runs.
( I also learned that this store deep-freeze saves the spines and heads left over from filleting the salmon to sell to people who want spines and heads. Maybe I will get some spines and heads to experiment with).
pj20
I bought the OXO fish turner. Hoe exactly does this work? The long end under the fish forst and then what? flip it over end to end?
After the fish has been on the grill the allotted time, it should release it‘s skin and be ready to turn. You test this by pushing at it‘s edge with the leading edge of the spatula facing downwards. If it has released, go ahead and turn it. If it’s a big fish , I often use a second standard spatula behind the fish to make sure I’m not just pushing the fish with the special one. Hope that helps. Also, when cooking fish, just turn it once, don’t try and get crosshatched grill marks. Hope that helps and good eating!
should have added, when you actually turn the fish, rather than just testing, you turn the curve on the spatula upward and slide it under the fish.