Before I get screamed at for "ruining" fresh fish let me say the idea of back woods fried fish was not my idea.... However I have come to think of it as an unbeatable meal.

Four or five years ago we started experimenting with deep frying in the Q.  We bring a couple of Nalgenes to hold oil (even hot) and a little thermometer to check oil temp... Then in goes the battered fish.  We also bring in Onions and Potatoes to make chips and onion rings.

All I can say is wow!!!

We cook over flame - this takes an hour or more to do it right, and make sure you have plenty of cooking wood as you will need to maintain oil temp.  Potatoes first - little salt and they are perfect.  Fish next and you have one heck of a meal.  Bring plenty of paper towels for soaking up grease (save and they make excellent fire starters too!).

However - we like beer batter, takes oil baths very well and crisps up nicely.  What we do not like is carrying a six pack of beer... it is tough to keep people out of the beer and the weight sucks! 

So, who has some good batter recipes they use at home?  BTW tried "Shore Lunch" brand and we are not thrilled.  We would love one for Jalapeño poppers - even the beer batter just never sticks - but are a great easy appetizer the first night. Ones that do not use beer would be helpful too...

Cheers!

I was at a friends house a couple weeks ago and we were eating fish and the batter was great....he used just plain Jiffy brand ..corn muffin mix.   I think I will mix it in with my regular mix.  It adds a little sweet corn bread taste to the fish...sort of like hush puppies.  Ill let you know how it works....will be in Q this time next week.

travelinman wrote on Jul 1^st, 2008 at 12:42pm:


Looks like a busy put-in day.  I'm in on the 13th at B'house.

BTW:  I tend to use Zatarain's Southern Style batter.

dd

Wow, the 13th will be busy... We go in Iron up to Argo, or so I was thinking.

We were hoping to have trout for lunch - any way we can and even a surf and turf dinner... But if there are too many traffic jams along the way we may just have to settle for surf and turf dinner

fishinbuddy wrote on Sep 1^st, 2008 at 12:51pm:


 Having spent 18 months in the Army, stationed in Germany, I can attest to the "blandness" of some European food.
 Germany/France/Spain/Italy among others seem to know what spices are, but England/Scotland/Ireland, have the blandness, most tasteless "ethnic" dishes I ever had.
 IF you spend anytime in Canada, other than in the big Metropolitan areas with International cooking influences, the rural foods are for the most part very bland and tasteless. I travel with a mini-bottle of Tabasco and get the strangest looks when I add it to just about anything I order
 If you watch any of the cooking shows on the tube, you don't see very many dishes from the British Isles featured. You would think with the dreary weather they have over there, they would welcome some spice in the kitchen