What Flavours Pair Well With Trout: Your Culinary Roadmap For Exploring This Delicious Fish.

Trout packs a lot of its natural sweetness and different breeds tend to have distinct flavours. When it comes to pairings, you don’t always need many spices and herbs to bring out these natural tastes. The traditional butter may be all you need to cook delicious trout. That said, fish is quite easy to flavour and there are many good pairings to go around. Whether you prefer leafy herbs and fresh spices or fancy grounded and powdered flavours, finding the best pairing for your trout shouldn’t be daunting. In the next sections, we review some of the top flavours you can pair with different types of trout, including river, sea, and rainbow trout.

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Choosing the Flavour for Your Trout Recipe

Trout flavours include classic browned butter, lemon, chives, rosemary, thyme, cloves, smoked paprika, parsley and many more. Many of them are herbs and spices used commonly across various traditions. In most cases, the dish and mean in general will shape your flavours. For instance, if you are serving it with fresh herbs and spices, you might want to cut down on using the same in cooking trout. Nonetheless, this isn’t a rule, and many dishes have tasteful blends of fresh and dry herbs and spices. Below are two key takeaways when choosing a flavour for your trout.

Know Your Trout

There are many different types of trout, but they mostly fall into river, sea or rainbow trout. Sea trout are sea dwellers for their entire life and also the priciest in the market. They tend to have vibrant pink flesh and distinct sweet and satisfying flavours. Rainbow trout also dwell in the sea but swim to rivers during spawning. They are known for their nutty, sweet taste and quite popular in the trout market. Lastly, river trout dwell in the rivers and pack diverse earthy sweetness.

Choose a Recipe

A recipe will go a long way in helping you work with various flavours known to bring the best taste out of fresh trout. There are thousands of unique recipes using different ingredients and spices. You can find recipes for cooking a whole trout or fillets and each uses distinct pairings, so having such a guideline is vital. There are no particular rules, so you can always use the spices in your kitchen. Also, some ingredients in a recipe are replaceable, so you aren’t limited to specific flavours each time.

The Best Flavours to Pair with Trout

As aforesaid, there are many available pairings when looking to flavour trout. Below is an overview of a few that hardly disappoint.

1. Lemon/Lime/Orange Juice

Lemon isn’t just an excellent source of Vitamin C and potassium. It has a bold flavour you can hardly miss and is popular in many fish dishes and cakes. The lime also breaks down the trout in the same way cooking does, albeit without heat. Lime and orange trout recipes are abundant online and perfect when you don’t want the ‘fishy’ smell. Essentially, fish flesh contains amines, which are naturally produced when the muscles start to break down. Amines are known for their off-putting fishy taste and smell closer to ammonia. When the amines mix with acids, such as the citric acid in lime, lemon, and oranges, they react to form amine salt, which doesn’t have a taste. Lime essentially neutralizes the fishy flavour, allowing you to enjoy the fish’s natural taste, and build onto it with new herbs and spices.

2. Butter/Browned Butter

Browned butter has been used to impart flavour into dishes for many ages, and works perfectly for trout. It is made by browning the milk solids found in regular butter. This step is merely heating the butter in a saucepan until it melts and simmering until it foams and turns into golden brown colour. Browned butter is quite aromatic and can be used to caramelize everything from fresh vegetables to fish, chicken and meat. It is also used in cakes and sauces. Fish and butter will never go wrong with a good recipe in place. You can also have trout with lemon and browned butter sauce. It is one of the classic recipes available and preserves the natural taste of your trout while introducing a new flavour. A great way to use the flavour is to drizzle it over poached trout.

3. Herbs and Spices

There are many herbs and spices you can use to flavour fish and most combine with each other depending on the recipe. Some of the top choices for trout are described below.

Chives – Known for its onion-like flavour, and a hint of garlic, chives are a great choice for sea and rainbow trout. It also works with whitefish like tilapia and recipes that include dairy products.
Ginger Root – Ginger is quite aromatic and pungent. It is also a tad spice and works with both sweet and savoury flavours. Freshly ground ginger root adds just a little bit of zest and is perfect for glazed trout recipes.
Parsley – This herb is a great choice for garnishing and pan-frying trout fillets. Parsley is known for its bitter taste and brightens the flavour more like lime juice. It suits savoury trout dishes.
Dill – This herb is soft, sweet and packed with bright tang, perfect for river and sea trout with mild flavours. You can knead dill into butter for your baked trout recipe for a tasty, aromatic dish.
Summer Savoury – More like thyme, summer savoury has a delicate aroma with a slightly sweet and peppery taste. It is commonly used to top poached trout and enhances the natural fish flavours.
Tarragon – You can use tarragon on your breaded trout recipe to enliven the taste. It is a bitter-sweet herb with flavours similar to black liquorice and anise and works well as part of a marinade.
Smoked Paprika – Smoking paprika brings out the sweet earthy aroma and the distinct taste of smoking chilli pepper. You can sprinkle some paprika over trout fillets cooked in butter for a robust aroma and tasteful dish.

Other Flavours

There are several other flavours you can pair with trout. You can use a marinade of soy sauce, spices and dry herbs or season the trout with mustard, sesame paste, coriander, cumin and fresh grapefruit juice. Whether you prefer a marinade, a zesty rub, fresh herbs, or cream sauces, there are many ingredients to go around. Trout can be paired with hot chilli pepper, tomato, garlic, ginger, oregano, raspberries, chiffonade, and many other herbs and spices readily available from the grocery store. Choosing flavours should be effortless once you know your fish. If it is your first time cooking trout, you can use traditional steaming and baking recipes to familiarize yourself with the natural flavours before you start adding more herbs and spices.

Summary

Trout shares its pairings with many other types of fish, including perch, tilapia, bass, and more, so you can always borrow. If you have cooked fish before, there’s no harm in experimenting with the same ingredients on trout. Nonetheless, the flavours mentioned above are known to produce the best results and widespread across various cultures and cuisines. Make sure you purchase fresh trout, clean and prepare, and cook well to get the best result. More importantly, you should know what each herb/spice/flavour adds to the meal, the dishes it suits, and the trout breed it pairs with best. This will help you find delicious harmony for every dish.

Sources

https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-herbs-season-fish-and-seafood-1761816

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/food_and_recipes/940628-What-herbs-go-with-trout