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Enough hemp seed oil, you don't CARE what the fish taste's like, as long as there's plenty of it

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Heh, hemp != marijuana

Pretty sure hemp is a legal crop up here.  Quite the wonder plant even without the THC.  Down there the cotton & wood pulp cartels have shut down this vastly superior material.  Some day we'll stop grinding trees to make poor quality disposable books.
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Preacher wrote on Sep 28^th, 2010 at 7:53pm:


Honest officer I am growing that hemp for the seed oil to cook my fish in.

Quick note on olive oil.  Virgin, Extra Virgin are wasted on cooking.  The heat kills the aromatic notes.  They're really intended for use as guarde mange/cold prep items.  Saves you some cash.

Look for an oil with a high smoke point.  This will lengthen the life of the oil and avoid burning it.
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I added (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) a dozen years ago and I still fry fish basically the same way but for two differences. I cut up fillets and cook the backs a bit before adding the tails and bellies so thick and thin are done about the same time. My new pan is thinner (very thin/light) so I prefer cooking fish over a fire for more even heat distribution and less fuss. Good flame control is a must and while my stove has that, a fire is just easier for me.

If you like crunch (I do), the oven style shorelunch® (or equivalent) gets nice and crunchy. Whatever didn't stick to the fish gets dumped in the pan to brown just before the fish is done.

MT,
I do usually use a good grade of olive oil,, but have experimented with other oils as well. Canola is good, so is Peanut oil, I even tried a blend of oils I saw in gourmet section of store. Grape-seed and a few oils I never heard of, but were touted as heart healthy. Could take the high heat I like for searing, but imparted a flavor to fish, I didn't care for. I know SD is a restaurant guy/ cook, and will have to try the Coconut oil. Sounds good and I like coconut.

If there's a Sam's club near you, check out there restaurant supply section. They have commercial grade pans,  made out of heavy aluminum. Non stick versions in each size. I use theme at home.
Long riveted handle and included silicone handle make them a good balance between light weight packer pans and the real heavy cast iron or aluminum fry pans.

The sell 2 small pans for around $ 20. I bought the non-stick. I think one would make a great solo pan. Easily hold a couple of fillets for one and would take the abuse of a trip.
 I have a thought for cleaning the pan of soot after cooking on fire, IF that is the way you roll.
 I've mentioned a product called POR-15 here before. It's a high-tech paint coating that dries extremely hard and smooth. So hard, that you need to sand blast it off when it hardens.

They make some high temp header paints for automotive use. My thought would be to paint the exterior of the aluminum pan, both sides of handle with this coating. It dries like ceramic, smooth and very non-porous. I'm thinking it would make removing the soot a matter of just wiping off with a scrubber/sponge type item.

Next trip I get to make, I'll try it out, unless you want to give it a shot

The main reason for not re-using oil is a health issue...cooking oil at high heat changes its molecular makeup.  Each successive time it is used it becomes more and more a "saturated" fat, even tho you started out with unsaturated corn or conola oil.
Olive oil is only slightly less likely to burn than butter when used for frying.
A non-stick pan by its nature requires very little oil.  I am not a fried fish gourmet but cannot see how deep frying the fish would make it taste different from using a non-stick pan and just a little oil.  Depending on what is used for breading, deep frying may be necessary to keep the coating from sticking to the pan.  Again, a non-stick pan would solve that problem.

MT,

1.  I usually used peanut oil.  This past year I brought coconut oil as a healthier and more flavorful alternative.  The negative of coconut oil is that it moves from liquid to solid at around 80 degrees F.  So you may need a spoon to get it out of the bottle...or not.  Nevertheless, love the flavor so I'm making this a permanent change.  Always though, I use some squeeze margerine as well as the oil...roughly 2/3 oil to 1/3 butter.

2.  Type of skillet?  Sure, heavy cast iron would be the best, but I'm not carrying that and I suspect neither are you.  I use a non-stick skillet.  There's a lot of variablility out there on non-sticks.  Some aren't worth the coating they are sprayed with.  Others are quite nice.  I have a couple that I regularly use.  One is a GSI w/ folding handle.  One is an old nonstick kitchen skillet of indeterminate origin with the handle removed.

3.  Grease is less-than-smoking hot.  It should bubble vigorously when the fillets hit the pan but no need to scorch the oil.  Your fillets should come out bronzed, not blackened.

4.  I like Zatarains Blackening seasoning.  Also Lemon Herb spice by McCormick is good.  Or simply sprinkle with dill, salt, pepper and then squeeze lemon over the top when removed from the pan.  Or any of a variety of dry rubs from the supermarket or butcher shop can be good.

Mostly, though, just experiment.  Try it on the home stove to get your technique down, then move to a campstove to be sure you have the right pan and learn the proper flame setting.  Or just wing it and use your campmates as guinea pigs, like I usually do.

Snow_Dog wrote on Sep 26^th, 2010 at 1:10pm:


Thank you for sharing SD. Quite comprehensive.  

Basically my entire life when I/we have fried fish it has always had some sort of coating on it. I have been partial to the slight crunch that breading's give a filet. I have never seriously considered frying a filet "naked". Solo Tripper has also mentioned it as his preferred method as well.

A few questions;
1) I believe ST does his in Olive Oil. How about you?
2) I am picturing this method with a heavy cast iron skillet which is of        course not practical. I own a GSI non stick. An excellent pan overall. How would this method work with non-stick?
3) Do you get the grease smoking hot or almost?
4) And of course your secret blend of herbs and spices ( or approximations thereof if you please)  

This would be an obvious solution for me. Less oil AND less fuel as well as one less step. Usually I try and be open to instruction from others but was perhaps a little dull of hearing and needed to hear this method from more than one source. I will pull some snapper from the freezer and give it a go. Results posted tomorrow night. I'm not especially fussy but my crew is  .    

Another vote here for just frying your fish in less oil. 

When I get done frying up my fish...whether it be for 1 person, 2 people, or 8 people...there's rarely more than a tablespoon or two of oil left in my pan and that's full of seasoning that I may or may not want next time I cook fish.

If you are having trouble with the concept of cooking fish adequately with very little oil it may be helpful to realize the physics behind cooking with oil and the effect volume of oil has on results.

Oil has 2 main functions.  It's a heat equalizer and a way to "store" heat. 

It functions as a heat equalizer by making the temperature of your pan more uniform regardless of where or how concentrated your heat source is.  The better your pan is at distributing heat on it's own, the less oil you will need.  A quality frying pan usually takes up the same amount of room in your pack, but it does weigh more.  You want to find the sweet spot on the spectrum of weight where you aren't lugging several pounds of cast iron but neither are you carrying an ultralight pan that gets hot only where the stove flame directly contacts it.  If you have a reasonably decent pan, just a thin layer of oil is needed to evenly cook the bottom side of any fillet, no matter how thick.  Fill your pan with fillets and the oil travels higher up the side of each of them.  No need to submerge or even get halfway up the fillet.  The fillet cooks from the bottom far more and far faster than it does from the sides.

Oil also functions as storage for heat.  Generally on a canoe trip, this is a function of oil that is rather unneccesary.  The reason why restaurants use deep fryers that hold a ton of oil is that they need to be able to cook large volumes of (often frozen) food as quickly as possible.  A large pot of oil stores enough heat so that when a basket of frozen goodies goes in it, the temperature doesn't dive down below the point where the food will cook properly.  It also mitigates the fact that the pot that the oil is contained in is a poor distributor of heat.  Granted, if you are feeding an army on a canoe trip (6-8 people) there is some advantage to using a high-volume frypan with a lot of oil...your fillets will cook faster.  But for 1-4 people, you can generally cook fast enough that the tradeoff of having less weight (smaller, lighter pan and less oil) is worth the minimal extra cooking time.

All that said, if you are cooking battered fish, you'll need more oil.  In this case, you have to get the oil level at least 2/3 of the way up the thickest fillets or you will have doughy batter on the edges.  With breaded fish, you have to hit the halfway mark on each fillet.  With seasoned, naked fillets as long as the bottom of the fillet is in contact with the oil, you're good.  For my money, batters and breadings are far inferior ways to flavor your fish.  Spices on naked fillets are much simpler and less heavy/bulky to lug around.