Pan-Fried Fish

This is pan-fried rainbow trout with lemon caper sauce.

  I'm not going to bore you with my "fish-is-yucky-but-it's-good-for-me" dilemma. Okay, I guess I just did...but since I found a cooking method that turns "yucky fish" into "I could eat this" fish for me and, "Wow-this-is-great!" fish for GoodMan, I thought I would pass on the information.
  It really is a good way of cooking fish. It's easy, doesn't take a lot of weird ingredients, doesn't make a huge mess of the kitchen, can be used on a lot of different varieties of fish, and really does taste good.

This is pan-fried whiting with lemon butter sauce (as well as creamed peas and spring salad).

  This is not so much about the type of fish, or the type of sauce, but about the style of cooking the fish. With this method of pan-frying, the fish is cooked skin-side down first. This gets the skin crispy. For people who like fish skin (oh gross, I can hardly even type that!) preparing the skin crispy is a plus. For those of us not crazy enough to like fish skin it makes it so the fish "meat" comes off the yucky skin and the yucky skin stays on the plate to be scraped into the garbage as nature intended.
  If you like crispy fish skin or, like me, you don't want any of the yucky skin to sneak it's way onto your fork, I will show you how it's done:

In this case I started with one large rainbow trout fillet and cut it in half. I sprinkled salt and pepper on the flesh side and then dredged it lightly in plain flour. And then I shook off the excess flour.

 I put my large fry pan on the stove over medium high heat and let the pan get hot. Then I put in 3 tablespoons of olive oil and one tablespoon of butter. When the butter stopped foaming (which means the butter was hot) I put the fish fillets in the pan skin side down. I immediately shook the pan back and forth to make sure the fish did not stick to the pan.

I cooked the skin side for about 4 minutes, until it was golden brown and looked crispy. Then I carefully flipped the fillets over and cooked them on the other side for about 3 or 4 more minutes, until the flesh looked opaque. At that point I removed the fish from the fry pan and put it on a warm plate.

This is were the sauce comes in. Sometimes I make lemon caper sauce by adding a tablespoon of drained capers and squeeze a fresh lemon into the pan and cooking just about a minute and then poured it over the fish.

This is what the fish looked like with the lemon caper sauce.

Sometimes I use this pan frying method to make other kinds of fish. I made whiting with it recently. That time I used all the same steps until it got to the sauce. For that fish I made a lemon butter sauce. After I took the fish out of the fry pan I added another tablespoon of butter and squeezed a lemon into the pan. I cooked it for less than a minute ~ just long enough to warm the butter and juice, and then I poured the sauce over the whiting.

This is whiting with lemon butter sauce.

 This method of cooking fish works well for fillets and especially for fillets with (yucky) skin. Through trial and error ~ way too many errors ~ I've found whitefish, bluegill, walleye and rainbow trout all work well with this method. Whiting was okay, but we liked other types of fish better. We were not impressed with catfish, tilapia or swai cooked with this method. They are too moist and without skin the fish tends to fall apart

What was the taste tester's bottom line?
GoodMan is thrilled that I'm trying all these fish recipes, and this is one of his favorites. I found myself actually enjoying these taste tests. I have my favorites. I like whitefish and rainbow trout best. My mother was visiting one of the days we had rainbow trout. After finishing her meal and telling me how much she enjoyed it she asked what kind of fish it was. When I told her "rainbow trout"  she was quite surprised. She said she'd never liked trout in the past ~ and she's a fish eater!

The bottom line: GoodMan and I are working toward a "less red meat" diet. This is one method of cooking fish to add to my repertoire. And with this method of cooking fish I may even like fish ~ but I will never, never I tell you, like the yucky skin!