cooking bass

some serious cooking skills on display here

I cook a lot of fish but i don't really know what I'm doing, mostly guess work. Results are usually good though. I tend to buy whole fish stuff them with various garden herbs, lemon slices and salt and pepper, lather with olive oil, wrap in tin foil and chuck in on the BBQ for 10 mins per inch of flesh thickness. Open foil parcel for the last ten mins to crispy it up and get that BBQ flavor in. I also have a hot smoker but i haven't used it yet, anyone got any ideas for that?

Maybe a recipe/method thread should be created. I'm sure between us we have some super recipes and ideas.

I'm currently building a stone oven/grill as a winter project. I ate loads of fish in the summer in Croatia cooked in simple stone grills, no tinfoil or anything, just fresh fish lashed onto a smokey wood fired outdoor grill. By far the nicest way to eat fish in my opinion. I think I need a fish basket to do this properly, does anyone know where i could get one?

Oh and another thing, superquinn are doing whole exotic seabass at half price at the moment. Steer clear, they are awful quality, very fatty and the worst attempt at gutting i have ever seen.

My favorite way of doing bass is in tinfoil with a bit of butter and seasoning in the oven for no more than 15 to 2o mins at about 180 degrees, the big problem that i find is that fish tends to be over cooked, the second that the flesh comes off the bone with no resistance its done, yummy

Love bass

Barbq'd, done in parcel in oven... done on bed of potatoes and cherry tomatoes in oven... in thai green curry... fish pie... fried in butter served with ginger, chilli and coriander.... so many options! And a beautiful chewy fish.

Hard to beat them filleted, skinned, dipped in seasoned flour and fried over high heat in 50:50 mixture of butter and oil....delish!

Just a tip for anyone cooking bass whole - usually in this scenario you will de-scale the fish, so that you can eat the skin after cooking if you wish (can be very tasty if seasoned with salt, pepper & butter and crisps up).

De-scaling a bass just requires a sharp knife, preferably serrated. You just run the knife repeatedly against the scales ('against the grain') and they will come off easily - *however* the biggest tip I ever got on de-scaling fish is to do this underwater - ie. fill up the sink with water, submerge the part of the bass that you are de-scaling and do it underwater. This prevents the scales flying all over the place which would happen if you de-scaled eg. just on a counter top - you'd be finding scales all over the kitchen for the next few years.

One final tip / piece of info - if you would like to know what age the bass was when he met his maker, take one of the scales and hold it up to the light. When you hold it at just the right angle (and have good eyesight), you will see concentric 'rings' within the scale. Like the rings on a tree, the rings on the scale of the bass tell you its age, where the first ring closest to the centre is 1 year old, and so on with each ring closer to the edge of the scale corresponding to an extra year. I have done this with the bass I have brought home for the pot and found it interesting to note how many years old the bass was.

With the ring counting method above, you can see in what years the bass grew more (when feeding / weather might have been better) than other years - this corresponds to rings which are spaced further apart.

[quote="Ronnach"]

De-scaling a Bass just requires a sharp knife, preferably serrated. You just run the knife repeatedly against the scales ('against the grain') and they will come off easily - *however* the biggest tip I ever got on de-scaling fish is to do this underwater - ie. fill up the sink with water, submerge the part of the Bass that you are de-scaling and do it underwater. This prevents the scales flying all over the place which would happen if you de-scaled eg. just on a counter top - you'd be finding scales all over the kitchen for the next few years

Better still do it at the beach.

De-scaling a Bass just requires a sharp knife, preferably serrated. You just run the knife repeatedly against the scales ('against the grain') and they will come off easily - *however* the biggest tip I ever got on de-scaling fish is to do this underwater - ie. fill up the sink with water, submerge the part of the Bass that you are de-scaling and do it underwater. This prevents the scales flying all over the place which would happen if you de-scaled eg. just on a counter top - you'd be finding scales all over the kitchen for the next few years

Better still do it at the beach.

As Nicefish said, descale on the beach, have done it at home a couple of times and endure days of " why the hell don't you do this on the beach" as we spend days of finding scales all over the place