Maybe my favourite lake trout recipe ever...

My adventures in cooking on our third night houseboating were going to include beer can chicken but the chicken wasn’t quite thawed and Mike caught a beautiful lake trout just after lunch. We had been hoping to cook some trout on a cedar plank on the barbecue so I happily saved the chicken for the next day.

It was my first time cooking with the cedar plank and I learned a few things. The plank really needs to be on the barbecue for a while before you start cooking the fish. The instructions with the plank I bought said nothing about this but I don’t really feel that we got a lot of that cedar smoke taste into the fish. The other thing about cooking on a plank is that it needs to soak for two hours before you start so I needed to plan this part of supper ahead a bit more. I soaked it in one of our water pails while we were moving which worked okay but soaking it in the lake would have been better as the plank was a bit too long for the pail.

We had some leftover baby potatoes that I fried up with garlic and onion and cooked one of Abby’s favourites, parsnips. If I hadn’t had so many other things going on on the barbecue I would have roasted them in foil with a bit of oil and honey. Roasting really brings out the parsnip flavour. We also had individual garden salads topped with the things we each like best. 

I had hoped to have fresh bread ready for Mike to have with supper but in the end, it made a great dessert with homemade strawberry jam.

Here’s the trout recipe. Mike and I both agreed that it was a make-again recipe. It has a nice sweet, mild flavour that still lets you taste the fish.

Maple-Soy Glazed Trout

A filet and steak of lake trout looking delicious.

2 1/2 lb fish (I think you could make more than this with this amount of glaze.)

1 tsp. coarse salt

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/4 c. maple syrup
2 TB soy sauce

2 TB melted butter (I omitted this)

2 TB. lime juice

1/2 tsp. lime zest - this will take at least two limes. I didn’t quite have enough.

2 TB fresh chives

lemon wedges

I marinated the trout in this mixture for about an hour but the recipe says just to glaze it as it cooks. 

Preheat the barbecue to 350. Place the cedar plank on the barbecue as it heats. Place the trout on the plank skin side down. Baste the trout throughout the cooking time. The recipe says this should only take 10 minutes to cook but I found that it took quite a bit longer, probably closer to 20 minutes. That may be because the plank wasn’t heated enough ahead of time. I’m not sure. You’ll know it’s done when the fish flakes easily with a fork.

Serve trout with chives and lemon wedges. I cut the lemon but forgot to bring chives. We found it tasted great as is and didn’t even use the lemon.