Freshwater Fish Recipes

What I intend to do here, is list the more common fish and give suitable general cooking methods for freshwater fish recipes - the seasons are applicable to the UK - please, if anybody has anything to add from other countries, I would be really grateful - thank you ;-)

The majority of freshwater fish recipes are for salmon, trout and their varieties – I will publish other recipes as I find them.

There is quite a debate around eating freshwater fish in the UK, with strict guidelines on the quantity, size and breeds you can take out of a river per day. Salmon and Trout are in a different category as they generally come from licensed rivers, but 'Coarse Fishing' is regarded as a catch and return form of angling.  The size of fish you're allowed to keep as a general rule (but some areas have slightly different guidelines and you need to check with the individual areas) are as follows:

• Pike - one per day smaller than 65cm (26 inches)
• 2 grayling smaller than 30-38 cm (12-15 inches)
• 15 smaller species up to 20 cm (8 inches) eg common bream, barbel, chubb, carp, silver bream, roach, smelt.
• all eels apart from conger eels must be returned to the river alive. 
• you cannot sell rod caught salmon or sea-trout in England and Wales

Go here for the UK Government guidelines regarding river fishing - there are large fines for breaking the laws.  

Given the regulations and size of the fish, it seems a bit academic to give recipes, but I'm going to give some, bearing in mind that many of these recipes will be useful for cooking other fish either as fillets, steaks or whole fish. 

Methods of cooking freshwater fish recipes are baking, poaching, grilling, boiling, stewing, frying, deep frying and braising, exactly the same as sea fish or commercially bought fish. 

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Perch
Grows to 6-12 inches (15-30cm). Available all year except March and April - best in summer.

Good taste but bony. Suitable for all methods of cooking.

Perch Fish
Perch with parsley sauce - an alternative to bbqing at the side of the river.

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Pike
Monsters of the rivers and ponds - grow to ove 4 feet (120 cm) and have seriously scary teeth. The very large ones will most likely be female breeding stock and over 20 years old - don't eat them, return them to re-stock the rivers.  There's a very interesting chart here which shows the estimated age and sex by size of the pike. 

Available all year - very bland, tasteless and bony - but if you've caught one and you’re determined to eat it, then try poaching it in a sauce - maybe wine and tomato.

It's more popular in France and quite often roasted, spiked with garlic slivers. There's a link here to a recipe outside this site for the very famous 'Quenelles de brochet' - making pike into a mousse and poaching it was one way of getting rid of the fearsome number of bones. 

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Salmon
Most people consider salmon to be the king of fish - I like it, but I prefer trout - it's got a more delicate flavour in my opinion. You can buy salmon all year round - normally farmed. If you can get wild salmon then you'll see the difference - the flesh is much firmer and a very much deeper in colour.

There are many more salmon freshwater fish recipes around the site - use the search box at the bottom of each page and click on the button for find-a-seafood-recipe.com

If you look below, you will find some links for more tasty and simple salmon recipes.

Trout

Trout come as Brown (mostly what you would catch yourself in the river) Rainbow Trout - the ones you would normally find at the fish counter and Salmon Trout - related to Brown trout, but larger.

You can buy farmed trout all year round, but wild trout is generally available from February to August or September.

It's suitable for most methods of cooking, but don't waste its delicate flavour in overseasoned sauces. There are other trout freshwater fish recipes on the site - the search box at the top will find them for you.

Baked Trout
A really simple baked trout, quick and easy. It would be suitable for any medium sized fish that you may catch.

Trout in White Wine
A microwave method of cooking trout in white wine - ready in a few minutes.

Speckled Trout Recipe
A delicate flavored fish like trout needs few cooking additions. This simple pan fried dish doesn't interfere with the flavor.

A selection of trout recipes including a video showing you how to make baked stuffed trout and some information on mercury levels in fish. 

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