Whole trout is extremely affordable and easy to find. This is a one pan meal that comes with baked fennel that cooks on the sheet pan with the fish. Serve with a side of whole lemon chopped parsley sauce.
This recipe was adapted from The Cook You Want to Be: Everyday Recipes to Impress by Andy Baraghani.
Looking for recipes to serve with trout? Check out these suggested side dishes for trout.
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Ingredients
- Trout - This recipe uses whole trout, scaled and gutted. (Costco sells it this way.) If you have head on trout, you want to look at the eyes - they should be as clear, bright, and shiny-eyed as possible to indicate maximum freshness. If you don't like the head, you can chop it off prior to cooking or buy it without the head.
- Fennel - Underrated vegetable, fennel and dried fennel are a classic pairing with seafood. Instead of potato, it's like a lower carb addition to the meal. Once cooked, it turns creamy, juicy, and has faint licorice-y notes. If you don't have fennel, you can also substitute with potatoes.
Fennel-Garlic Butter
Instead of just sprinkling the trout with salt and pepper, a rich fennel butter is slathered onto the skin.
- Olive Oil - I use extra virgin olive oil, but use the olive oil of your choice. Alternatives are grapeseed oil, coconut oil, or expeller pressed canola oil.
- Butter - Unsalted butter is preferred, so you can control the amount of salt in your food. Salted butter or vegan butter will work too.
- Garlic - Smash with a garlic press to release the maximum amount of beneficial compounds from each clove.
- Fennel Seeds - Toast the seeds if you can by putting in a small pan and gently heating to medium heat. Swirl the pan around as it's toasting. Once you can start to smell them and they start crackling a little bit, remove from the hot pan, so they don't continue to cook. Alternately, you can use the already ground fennel powder, but there's generally more flavor from toasting seeds first, then crushing yourself.
- Salt and Pepper to taste
See recipe card for quantities.
Zingy Lemon Parsley Sauce
Instead of squeezing fresh lemon juice over the trout, this trout is dressed with a lemon-y, zingy sauce made with the entire lemon (except seeds).
- Parsley - Fresh parsley can last a very long time in the fridge, if you wrap it in some damp paper towels and store in a plastic bag. I don't seal the bag, since I found it rots quicker if there is no air circulation.
- Meyer Lemon - These are the 'special' lemons that don't taste as sour or tart as a plain Eureka lemon. If you can't find these, use a regular, lemon (preferably unwaxed), and add a little bit more sweetness with honey.
- Honey - Substitute with agave, brown sugar, or brown rice syrup.
- Shallot - This adds a touch of mild onion flavor. Substitute with red onion or fresh chives.
See recipe card for quantities.
The sauce will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days. Let it come to room temperature before using, so the oil returns to liquid form.
Instructions
Trim off the bottom root end of the fennel. Then slice about ½ inch thick.
Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. (Or just drizzle on the oil if you don't want to touch it.) Spread onto an even lever on a half sheet sized baking sheet.
Bake until al dente for about 20 minutes.
Grind up the fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle or in a spice grinder.
Mix the ground fennel into softened butter along with minced garlic. Slather onto the skin side of the trout and the inside belly.
Place a greased rack on top of the cooked fennel. Place the trout on top.
Bake the trout on the lower third of the oven for 15-25 minutes or until the fish registers 145 degrees F.
Garnish wtih fresh parsley and serve with a side of lemon sauce or fresh lemon wedges.
Zingy Lemon Parsley Sauce
While the fennel and trout are cooking in the oven, you can make this lemon sauce. If you'd rather not make this sauce, you can just serve the trout with lemon wedges.
Mince the shallot.
Chop lemon into ¼" dice, including the skin. Remove the seeds and white, pithy core.
Toss with chopped lemon with salt and let sit for 10 minutes.
Chop parsley leaves. Mint or a combination of mint with parsley works too.
Mix the parsley, honey, and pepper into the chopped lemon.
The sauce will keep up to 3 days in the fridge.
Once the trout is finished cooking in the oven, serve on a platter with the fennel and lemon parsley sauce on the side. (I garnish with big parsley leaves to cover the burned spots or parts of the head.)
Will the skin be crispy?
Trout skin is very thin. I've tried many versions of cooking this dish by broiling, using the convection setting so hot air can circulate, and placing the sheet pan on the top of the oven.
Because of the butter on the skin, it has a tendency to burn if not watched carefully. Also, I didn't like the convection setting because hot grease flew around and diritied the walls of the oven. (I like convection setting better for baked goods where the fat is contained in the dough.)
The trout skin in this dish is not not crispy, but it's not super crispy either. And even if you do get it crispy under the broiler initially, it starts to wilt as it cools.
Tips to Make it Better @Home
- Besides using as fresh trout as possible, leave the butter out a few hours or the night before, so it's really soft when you slather it on the skin.
- Make the zingy lemon sauce up to 3 days ahead of time. Let it come to room temperature before serving.
- Use the convection cooking option in the oven, if you don't mind dirtying the oven with flying molecules of butter. The skin will get a wee bit crispier but not a huge difference.
- Because of the butter on the skin, it will burn easily if you broil this under high heat.
Related Fish Recipes
Looking for other recipes like this? Try these:
Pairing Vegetarian Dishes
Recipe
Oven Baked Trout with Fennel and Zingy Lemon Sauce
Ingredients
- 3 ea fennel bulbs about 1 -1 ½ lb of fennel; See Note 2 for using potatoes instead
- ¼ c extra virgin olive oil
- 2 ea whole trout, scaled and gutted about 1 lb for each trout; deboned optional; See Note 1 for alternate types of fish
- salt to taste see Recipe Instructions for quantity recommendations
- parsley for garnish
Fennel Butter
- 2 teaspoon fennel seeds, ground to powder in a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder or 1 teaspoon ground fennel
- 6 Tb unsalted butter at room temperature
- 2 teaspoon minced garlic about 3 large cloves of garlic grated on a microplane grater
Zingy Lemon Sauce
- 1 ea meyer lemon, unwaxed See Note 3 for using a regular (Eureka) lemon
- 1 Tb minced shallot
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ⅓ c extra virgin olive oil
- ⅓ c coarsely chopped parsley and/or mint
- 1 teaspoon honey or agave
- a pinch of freshly ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Place the oven rack on the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- Trim the root end off the fennel. Stand on the root end, and slice into ½ inch planks. Toss with fennel slices with the olive oil and salt to taste. (For me this is about ½ teaspoon of pink Himalayan salt.)
- Spread the fennel slices onto a baking sheet in an even layer. Roast in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until the bottoms are slightly golden, and there is still some bite to the fennel.
- While the fennel is roasting, mix all the fennel butter ingredients in a small bowl.
- Season the trout on both sides and the inside with salt. (For me this is about ½ teaspoon of pink Himalayan salt for each trout). Slather the fennel butter onto both sides of the trout and the inside. The bottom of the trout doesn't need too much since this will just drip off during cooking.
- Remove the fennel baking pan from the oven and place the baking rack over the fennel. If you don't have a rack, you can just push the fennel to the sides of the baking sheet make space for the trout. If this fennel is bunched up on top of each other, that is ok.
- Lay the trout on the rack. Place in the oven and bake for 15-25 minutes until cooked through or a thermometer registers 145 degrees F in the thickest part of the fish.
- Remove from the oven and serve garnished with parsley and with the zingy lemon sauce or lemon wedges on the side.
Optional Zingy Lemon Sauce
- Chop the lemon into 4 wedges with the skin. Remove the seeds. Chop each wedge further into into pea sized chunks.
- Mix the lemon pieces with the minced shallot and salt. Let it marinate for 10 minutes to allow the salt to soften the lemon and shallot.
- Combine the lemon mixture with remaining sauce ingredients: parsley, honey, and black pepper.
- Refrigerate for up to a week. Let it come to room temperature before serviing, since the oil will congeal.
Notes
-
- Instead of trout, you could use 2 lb of another small whole fish such as snapper, rockfish, branzino, or sea bass.
- If using potatoes instead of fennel, cut into small chunks, about 1 ½ inch dice. Cook for at least 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes for the fennel. They should be cooked through before adding the fish to the pan.
- If using a regular lemon instead of a Meyer lemon, (which is a tiny bit sweeter and less acidic), use an additional ½ teaspoon of honey.
- Besides using as fresh trout as possible, leave the butter out a few hours or the night before, so it's really soft when you slather it on the skin.
- Make the zingy lemon sauce up to 3 days ahead of time. Let it come to room temperature before serving.
- Use the convection cooking option in the oven, if you don't mind dirtying the oven with flying molecules of butter. The skin will get a wee bit crispier but not a huge difference.
- Because of the butter on the skin, it will burn easily if you broil this under high heat.
Nutrition
Fortune Cookie 🥠
Don't leave anything for later. Later, the coffee gets cold. Later, you lose interest. Later, the day turns into night. Later, people grow up. Later, people grow old. Later, life goes by. Later, you regret not doing something...when you had the chance.
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