Grilled Whole Trout

Grilled whole fish has become one of our most favorite casual dinners. As I have mentioned before, we’re happy owners of a Green Egg, a ceramic charcoal grill, that is perfect for grilling, smoking and even pizza baking.

When grilled right, a whole fish has a beautiful thin, crispy skin and tender and moist flesh.

The major problem with grilling whole fish is its tendency to stick to a grilling rack. There are several things that you can do to prevent it. First of all, make sure that the grill grates are clean and brush them generously with oil before starting the grill. Pat dry your fish very thoroughly and let its skin air dry.  Right before cooking, brush it will oil and season with salt and other spices to your liking. When cooking, try not to turn fish more than once, allowing it to cook at least 3 minutes before flipping over. Even if it has stuck to the rack when you put it on, it will unstick by itself once the lower side is cooked. Use a large metal spatula with a flat sharp edge to turn fish over. Let it slide all over under the fish before flipping. Don't use tongs - they work well with steaks, but not fish, especially when it’ almost cooked.

Here’s the process in more details:

Brush the grill grates with oil and start preheating the grill to high. We make ours go up to about F480-500.

Gut the fish if it wasn’t at the store and trim off the fins. Scale the fish using the back of a knife or with a special scaler, going from the tail towards the head. Rinse well inside and out and pat dry thoroughly with paper towels. Put on a flat platter side by side, but not touching each other, and let air dry. Better yet, place them under a fan. In my kitchen, a fan is a popular device. It comes in handy when I need to air dry something, like fish or poultry, for frying or grilling. Turn the fish over every now and then to air dry the other side. The drying usually takes about 5-10 minutes.

When the fish skin is completely dry and your grill is ready to go, make several parallel incisions on each side of the fish about 1¼ inch apart. Use a very sharp knife so it could easily slice through without smooshing the fish.  

Squeeze about a quarter lemon in each cavity and sprinkle with salt and black pepper. Brush the fish all over with oil, grape seed or canola will do, and also sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put a whole dill sprig in each cavity and put the fish on the grill. Cook for about 4-5 minutes, then turn over and cook on the other side for about the same time. Cut a lemon in half widthwise and grill it too for several minutes. It will make it super easy to squeeze the juice out of it.

Serve the fish with the grilled lemon and some simple side of asparagus or grilled Belgian endive or radicchio.