Smoked whole fish with French butter sauce
I fell in love with the ugliest fish I saw at my local fish shop. It was a whole plaice with clear eyes and red gills. I took the fish home with me and thought of a recipe on the way home.
I smoked it and made a Beurre Blanc, of French butter sauce, to go with it. This recipe is so versatile it works with any fish.
Ingredients
- A whole fish
- sea salt
For the French butter sauce
- 250 grams of butter
- 50 grams of finely diced shallots
- 50 ml of dry white whine
- 25 ml of white wine vinegar
- sea salt and fresh ground black pepper
How to
- Clean up the fish by taking off the skin and gills. You could ask the fishmonger to do this for you.
- Sprinkle on some sea salt and fire up your grill to smoke on the lowest temperature possible. Preferable around 60°C (140F).
- Place some smoke wood with a light smoke profile, like beach, on the charcoal. Put the fish on the grates and close the lid.
- In the meantime, we are going to make the French butter sauce by melting a little bit of butter in a pan over low heat.
- To that, we ad the shallots and stir it till it turns soft. Then pour in the white wine and the vinegar and let this reduce to about a tablespoon.
- Then we add the rest of the butter and whisk it constantly while adding. Make sure you do this over low heat; otherwise, the butter starts to curdle. Keep whisking till the sauce is creamy.
- Put the sauce through a sieve, so you get rid of the shallots but keep the flavour. Bring the sauce to taste with a little sea salt and black pepper.
- When the fish reaches a core temperature of 60°C (140F), you take it off the grill and on a plate. Serve it with the butter sauce.
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BBQ gear used
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