Skillet Trout with Lemon Butter
Fish you caught, flour you carried, and a butter sauce that takes two minutes.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 4 oz
- cal / oz
- 130
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 25 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Liquid fuel
- Canister stove
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Day one only
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Rainbow trout fillet | 1 large, cut in half | caught that day, or packed on ice for night one |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1/2 cup | premeasured into a zip bag at home |
| Salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Black pepper | 1/2 tsp | |
| Olive oil | 2 tbsp | |
| Butter | 4 tbsp | cut into cubes before it softens |
| Garlic | 2 cloves, sliced thin | |
| Lemon juice | 1 tbsp | a small squeeze bottle beats a whole lemon |
| Red pepper flakes | 1/4 tsp | optional |
| Parsley | 1 tbsp chopped | optional, fresh or dried |
| Lemon wedges | a few | optional |
Method
- Salt and pepper both sides of the fillets.
- Drop them in the flour bag, shake, and pull them out. Knock off the loose flour or it burns in the pan.
- Set a cast iron skillet over the fire or a steady stove flame and let it heat five minutes. Cold pan means stuck fish.
- Add the olive oil, then lay the fillets in skin side down. Two to four minutes a side, and move them once, not five times.
- Pull the fish onto a plate and tent it with foil.
- Drop the butter cubes into the hot pan and swirl until melted and the foaming stops.
- Add the garlic and pepper flakes, swirl about thirty seconds, then kill the heat and stir in the lemon juice.
- Pour the sauce over the fish. Parsley and lemon wedges if you carried them.
This one stays close to a home kitchen recipe because it has to. Butter and fresh fish do not survive a long trip, so this is a lake-day dinner or a night-one meal out of the cooler, not something you carry for a week. Everything else is dry and premeasured at home.
The flour is not decoration. It dries the surface so the fish releases from the pan instead of shredding, and it thickens the butter sauce slightly when the two meet. Take the pan off the heat before the lemon juice goes in. Acid in a screaming hot pan splits the butter and you get grease with lemon in it.
Packing
Flour, salt, and pepper go in one zip bag at home; that bag is also your dredging container, so nothing extra to wash. Butter and oil ride in a hard container in the cooler or the coldest part of your pack. Lemon juice in a leakproof squeeze bottle.
Variations
- No fresh fish: a thick fillet of any firm white fish works the same way.
- Skip the flour and the sauce still works, you just lose the crust.
- A splash of vinegar covers for lemon juice if the bottle leaked.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/cast-iron-trout-with-lemon-butter