If you have been lucky enough to catch a fish, you now should cook it before you eat it, especially if it is a fresh water fish. Freshwater fish are more likely to have parasitic infections which can be dangerous to humans. There are two main ways in which I try to cook my fish, depending on how much time and energy I have.

For a complete way of cleaning fish check out my Cleaning Fish page.

The first way I deal with the fish is the char method. Clean out the innards by cutting into the belly and scooping out the guts(bury or throw into the fire). Leave the head intact if you can. Rough up the scales by scraping a knife the 'wrong' way on the body of the fish. If you have some fresh herbs, like watercress or mint, stuff it into the cleaned belly. Take a skewer or cooking nail and close the belly, sew it if you have thread that will not melt in the heat. Put a spit or cooking stick through the mouth of the fish and cook about 15 minutes to a side over a bed of coals. If you do not have a spit to hang over the fire, take some wet leaves, lake weed or other edible vegetation, wrap the fish in it and toss it onto the coals. It may burn, but the flesh will be good to eat.

The second way I have is a little more complicated. Chop the head off just below the gills and put it into a pot of water over the fire. Clean and fillet the fish like in my example Cleaning Fish page. Put the bones and tail into the boiling water.

While the water is making fish stock, put any seasoning(salt, pepper, etc.) onto the fillets. You will need herbs or vegetables, whatever is around. Place some vegetables and herbs in-between the two fillets, tie the fillets together with cotton twine, and tie some wet herbs on the outside. Place the fillets near the coals of the fire, about 3 minutes per side and then check the meat. It should be white, not translucent or clear for eating. It will char a little.

If you do not have herbs or vegetables available, look around you and see what you can find. Grape leaves can be used to wrap the fish. Sumac berries can go into the fish for seasoning. Queen Anne's Lace root is a good vegetable. Finding food.

The fish stock should have gotten to the point that you can scoop out the bones. Scoop them out and into the fire. Put rice, wheat berries or what ever starch you are using into the water.

Take the fish off the fire and put into the rice. Let it cook, jiggling the pot on occasion, for about 20 minutes. Take off the fire and let stand covered for 5 to 10 minutes, or until cool enough to eat.

One thing to look for when fishing is the stuff not to eat. The following article is a prime example of both needing to know what you have, and teaching others.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A four-year-old boy died after eating part of a highly poisonous toadfish while on a fishing trip by the Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia's far north.
Police said the boy was with his mother, brother and some cousins fishing on the banks of the Albert River at Burketown, 400 miles west of Cairns in the state of Queensland, when one of the children caught a toadfish.
"The children cooked the toadfish on the campfire, unbeknown to the boy's mother, and he ate part of it," a police spokeswoman told Reuters.
The boy collapsed a short time later and he was taken to a medical clinic where he was pronounced dead on Monday afternoon.
The toadfish toxin, tetrodotoxin, is highly poisonous and is contained in its liver, skin and intestines, rather similar to Japan's deadly puffer fish. There is no known antidote.
"It's rare you hear of someone dying from eating a toadfish as everyone knows they are poisonous and this sounds like it was just a tragic accident," said a spokesman from the marine biology department of Queensland's James Cook University.
Symptoms can appear 10 to 45 minutes after eating the fish with the patient suffering dizziness and losing coordination followed by decreased blood pressure and a rapid, weak pulse. Eventually, the patient suffers paralysis.

Hey! Get to know what you are eating!

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