Cooking Trout

Hopefully by this point you've already cleaned the fish and are sitting with a string of decently sized fish carcasses. Naturally, this process will work just fine if you are at your home, just substitute "fire" for "stove" or somesuch. Keep in mind that process 1 is entirely more simple than process 2, as process 2 is a method of slow cooking rather than frying. Either is completely do-able while camping however, and thats saying a lot coming from me (its been said that I can't cook.) So the trick is, if you know you're going to be fishing, pack according to how you plan on cooking your fish.

You Need: for process 1
• Your fish
• A box of cornmeal
• A ziplock bag helps, but I suppose you could improvise
• A frying pan
• Cooking oil
• A spatula (or some means of "flipping") Once again, improvise if you need to.
• A single-burner stove (to be fair, the campfire works fine, its just less easy to use.)

If you have ever fried anything before, this should be second nature to you. If you haven't, read on. Place your frying pan on your means of fire. Add a lot of oil to this pan. You may eventually have to add more, as the oil tends to evaporate (especially in higher altitudes, where the air pressure is lower.) Keep in mind, that at higher altitudes, your oil will boil at a much lower temperature. Basically, put about enough oil in that if a fish were laid on its side, the oil would cover at least half of the fish.

Next, get your cornmeal and spread it out over some tinfoil or place it in your ziplock bag. The basic idea of this, is you need to take your fish and cover it in cornmeal. However you get this accomplished is up to you. Generally, fish tend to be a bit slimy so you shouldn't need to butter it. Furthermore, your fish should never be dry so the cornmeal should stick pretty well.

Once the oil is boiling, drop the fish into the pan. This is the tricky part. You see, it needs to be golden brown . On a side before you flip it. Problem with that is, is you can't really see the side-down side of the fish. If you flip it early however, all it means is you're going to have to re-cook the side that was down, and dammit, you're on the stream you want your fish now, rather than after they've been cooked 8 times. Eventually, you'll be able to tell by the smell. When a side is done.

Once your fish is golden brown, take it out, add some lemon for taste, and if the fish is over 6 inches, bone it. Under 6 inches, generally the fish's bones will fry along with the rest of it, and you can eat it straight without fear of choking. This is part of the convienence of cooking fish this way, as if you are in the back country most brookies are not very large at all, and its much quicker to eat them without boning them.

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Baked While Camping: (you need)
• Fish (obviously)
• Aluminum foil
• Lemon, or lime
• Butter
• Campfire (works better than a stove)
• Some tongs for fish retrieval

This is much easier to explain, but is a completely different taste. Start with your cleaned trout and cut off about a half an inch off your stick of butter. Place this butter cube inside the fish. Slice up your lemon, or your lime into about eighths, and stick one of these wedges inside your fish as well. (Some prefer to squeese the juice, but I find that if you squeeze, and then place the used husk of the lemon or lime inside the fish, you'll really get the best flavor.)

Very simply, wait until the fire is down to coals. This is why generally frying the fish is more convenient. It tends to take forever to get the fire to this point. Wrap your fish in aluminum foil, and place in the fire for about twenty minutes. Use the tongs to retrieve your fish. Don't worry about overcooking, as its pretty hard to do on coals. Generally the more you cook your fish, the more tender it gets in this way. The trout generally comes out tasting like fish sticks this way, so having some tartar sauce is not always a bad idea. Keep in mind that when cooked this way, every fish will need to be boned so you may want to keep that in mind if you lack the skill to do so.