home | Cooking

Baked Stuffed Missouri Rainbow Trout

This is my favorite way to prepare trout, and is best when the fish is very fresh - caught in the same weekend. Skip the nonsense and go right to the recipe.

You’ll need the following:

• Babysitter and/or wife’s goodwill
• Missouri fishing license and trout tag
• Set of gear (waders, vest, net, stringer, fly rod, reel, line/tippet/leader, indicators and flies)
• Pocket knife
• Cooler and ice

1. Stop at Wal-Mart and get a Missouri fishing license.
2. Drive 2.5 hours to Bennett Springs State Park.
3. Stay up until 4am playing rummy.
4. Wake up at 8am, make espresso in the stove top coffee espresso maker and eat 2 of Dick Widman’s pancakes.
5. Drive to the lodge and buy a daily trout tag and extra flies.
6. Hit the stream!
7. Enjoy the cool water, the smell of fall in the air, the sound of riffles in the stream and crickets on the bank, the challenge of determining the right combination of variables to catch a fish and the pleasure of being far away from work and worry. Ahhhhh.
8. Catch 3 trout. Clean them.
9. Hold the trout around the middle with its underbelly facing towards you.
10. Insert a sharp knife into the arse, moving knife point upward slit the trout to the gill cavity.
11. Looking at the bottom jaw of the trout, there is an upside horseshoe like tab. Slide the knife under the tab to loosen it.
12. Put your thumb under the horseshoe shaped tab and push it into the gill cavity.
13. Gripping the head with the other hand, remove gill cavity along with entrails in one downward motion.
14. Along the inside of the back bone is a blood vein that must be removed.
15. Slice the thin membrane that run along the top of it.
16. Using your thumbnail, scrape the blood away from the flesh.
17. Repeat for the remaining fish and put them on ice.
18. Go back to the cabin for chili and play some cards.
19. Drive home.

Bake the Fish:

• 4 rainbow trout (your daily limit)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 diced celery stalk
• 1 cup fresh bread cubes
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 8 pieces of bacon

1. Stop at the grocery store for bacon, celery and onion.
2. Preheat the oven to 450° F.
3. Chop up a celery stalk and one onion.
4. Have the kids chop some bread slices into cubes. Lily likes to use scissors.
5. Fry the celery and onion in butter until it is soft, about 5 minutes.
6. Mix the celery and onion with the bread cubes and add salt, pepper and thyme.
7. Rip the heads off the trout, season the stomach cavities with salt and pepper, and fill with stuffing.
8. Place the trout in a lightly buttered pyrex baking dish. Put a piece of tin foil under each tailfin so it doesn’t stick to the pyrex.
9. Briefly fry the bacon, removing from the heat while it is still soft. This way there isn’t too much bacon grease with the fish, and the bacon will be crisper.
10. Wrap 2 bacon strips around each trout and drizzle with a small amount of bacon grease.
11. Bake at 450° for 30 to 40 minutes. Check periodically by poking periodically with a fork. It will be done when it flakes effortlessly. Remember when the samurai master drops a piece of silk on to his sword’s edge and it is cut effortlessly? Like that.
12. Yum.

© 2008 Nathan Verrill.