Home › The World's Kitchen › Broiled Kingfish
Broiled Kingfish
Drain and neatly wipe two fresh kingfish of one and a half pounds each. Cut off the heads, split open through the belly, without separating, remove the spinal bones and neatly trim all around. Season evenly with a teaspoon salt, two teaspoons pepper and rub with half tablespoon oil; arrange on a broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish and spread a tablespoon melted butter over. Decorate the dish with six pieces lemon and serve.
A plain gridiron treatment of a small whole fish, written for a coal-fired broiler and a fishmonger who would do the splitting for you. Two adjustments matter: the pepper, and what to buy.
- What kingfish means hereIn an American book of this period, kingfish is the northern kingfish or whiting, a small silvery drum common off the Atlantic coast, not the king mackerel sold under the same name in the South. Any firm, mild whole fish of about 1 1/2 lb works: whiting, small striped bass, branzino, black sea bass, porgy.
- The pepper is a typo-scale amountTwo teaspoons of pepper against one of salt on three pounds of fish will bury it. A scant half teaspoon is closer to what the dish wants.
- Splitting the fishButterflying through the belly and lifting out the backbone leaves the two fillets joined along the back, so the fish opens flat and cooks evenly. Ask the fishmonger to do it, or run a thin knife along both sides of the spine from inside the belly and snip the bone at head and tail with shears.
- Broiler means gridironThe original was cooked over live coals on a gridiron or wire broiler and turned to cook both sides. Under a modern overhead broiler, preheat it, set the rack about 4 inches from the element, and cook the fish skin side down for most of the time; a butterflied fish of this size rarely needs turning.
- Six minutes a side is for coalsTwelve minutes total will overcook a butterflied 1 1/2 lb fish under a hot broiler. Start checking at seven or eight minutes total, and pull it when the flesh at the thickest point turns opaque and separates with light pressure.
- Oil first, butter afterThe half tablespoon of oil is there to keep skin from welding to the bars, not to flavour anything. The melted butter goes on off the heat, over the fish on its hot dish, and does the seasoning work.
- YieldTwo fish, four modest portions, or two generous ones with nothing but the lemon and some potatoes.
Northern kingfish was an abundant market fish along the New York and New Jersey coast when this book was compiled, landed in quantity in the warm months and sold small, whole, and fresh. It earns a bare six-line entry: no sauce, no garnish beyond lemon, nothing to disguise a fish assumed to have come out of the water that morning. The technique — broil, finish with butter — is the standard grill treatment applied across dozens of species in kitchens of the period, and the same page pattern recurs throughout the book with only the fish's name changed. The name has drifted; "kingfish" on an American fish counter today is more often king mackerel, a much larger and oilier fish that this recipe was not written for.