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Golden Brook Trout
SMALL BROOK TROUT SALT AND PEPPER FLOUR BUTTER Clean trout, leaving heads and tails on. Season and roll LEMON JUICE TARRAGON TABASCO CAPERS lightly in flour. Heat butter in frying pan, lay in trout, being careful not to crowd them, and fry golden brown, turning frequently. Arrange in a row on a hot platter. Sauce For each 6 trout heat 1/2 cup butter light brown. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice or tarragon vinegar with salt and Tabasco to taste, and a few capers. Bring to boiling point, pour over trout and serve.
A camp-side fry finished with brown butter — the whole thing takes under fifteen minutes once the fish are cleaned. The sauce is the point, and it is made in the same pan the trout came out of.
- Size of fish"Small brook trout" here means pan-size fish cooked whole, probably in the 8-10 inch range. The recipe pitches the sauce at 6 trout, which at two fish a head would serve about three.
- Turning frequentlyModern practice is the opposite: lay the trout in and leave them alone for 3-4 minutes a side so a crust sets, then turn once. Frequent turning tears the skin off a floured fish and drags the coating into the butter, where it burns.
- Butter will scorchButter alone in a hot pan browns fast at frying heat. Either clarify it first, or use half butter and half a neutral oil so the milk solids do not blacken before the fish is done.
- DonenessThe flesh at the thickest part behind the head should be opaque and pull cleanly from the backbone — around 5-8 minutes total for a fish of this size. Whole trout carry on cooking on the hot platter, so pull them a shade early.
- The sauce hinge"Heat 1/2 cup butter light brown" is beurre noisette: swirl over medium heat until the solids turn hazelnut-coloured and it smells nutty, then add the acid. Past that stage it darkens quickly and can turn acrid.
- Tarragon vinegarOnce a standard pantry bottle, now less common. Any white wine vinegar with a bruised tarragon sprig steeped in it for an hour stands in, or use the lemon juice as the recipe allows.
- CapersRinse brined capers and pat them dry before they meet hot butter, or they spit. Salt-packed capers need a longer soak and no extra salt in the sauce.
- Heads and tails onLeaving them attached holds the fish together in the pan and looks right on the platter. Clean thoroughly and scrape the blood line along the spine.