We take you into the KastKing Kitchen with Clay and Sandi Roberts to learn how to clean trout and how to cook trout to make fish tacos. This blog is from the soundtrack of the KastKing channel video HOW TO CLEAN AND COOK TROUT FOR FISH TACOS KastKing Catch to Kitchen Ft Sandi & Clay Roberts.

Hi, welcome to the KastKing Kitchen, I'm Sandi Roberts and today we're doing an episode. We call catch to kitchen. So what are we going to do? We're going to try to catch a fish, and then we're going to bring it home and we're going to prepare it into a really nice meal.

Fly Fishing In The Rocky Mountains For Trout

So today we are at Antero Reservoir in Colorado located in the high mountains - and we're going to be trying to go fly fishing for some nice trout and bring them home and make them into a nice meal. Now what we're going to do is we ‘ve got a dry fly and then we've connected a nymph below the dry fly, so that's, going to give us two chances to catch some of these fish that have just started to come up. One might get it from the top. One might want to go down a little. So let me get some line out here and we'll see if maybe we can, if it never fails, I get the dry fly out and all sudden the fish stop coming up. So we'll see what happens.

While filming catch to kitchen today we caught several really nice brown trout. Now, as a rule, we really don't like to keep the brown trout, but we are at a lake where you can keep the fish and bring them home and cook them, and the idea of this show was we were going to catch all these nice fish and prepare them into a nice meal. A very nice brown trout, several of these caught, we're going to let him swim away. We’re going to release him to safety.

 How To Clean Trout

 Well, we've caught the fish, and now it's time to clean them. We've set up a very simple cleaning station. Here we have our cutting board. We have our water that we're going to be using and the trash bag to put the remains in, and Clay will be talking to you about that in a little while, so we're ready to get them all cleaned.

Okay, we got a little mess of rainbow trout that we caught today. This isn't a pudding tank lake. These fish are meant to be caught and taken home, so these are all actually hatchery trout. You can tell that a little fin right there has been clipped. Okay, so I see a lot of people try to try to clean trout and they are trying to fillet a nice little trout like this, and it just ends up being a mess. I learned this as a kid stick with us throughout the video and you'll, see how it works actually on the plate, so our first our first cut goes from the vent, basically to the chin.

Of course, you want to have a sharp knife and be careful that you don't cut yourself. Finger out of the way there's, the first cut. The second cut is basically, which i guess you'd call the trout's tongue, one through that membrane. There out the other side and out we're going to grab that grab the trout by the jaw and we're just going to pull this down and everything comes out. We’re going to dispose of that properly in a bag that we have here.  

So all that's left is a blood line. We’ve got our water. We're just going to run our finger down that line right on the spine, just wash them out real quick . Anything that's left and a lot of this you'll do this in the kitchen sink when you're done. But, this is a field dress there he is and on ice he goes

 How To Cook Trout

 So we're back at the KastKing Kitchen. Here's our next step in the prep just got back from the lake. We're going to rinse the fish off trout. You see how shiny they are. We have to descale here's, how we descale a not real, sharp knife, but not a butter knife, but just something you can scrape with. And we’re going to scrape from the tail to the head and you can see the fish start to get dull running water. You want some running water, wash the scales off so see the see the difference that's. What you want you go through the whole fish that way it doesn't.

Take long just scraping. You see the scales coming off, that's pretty much one side. You're, not going to eat this, but it's just better to do here. We go again. We’re going to do this to all the fish, so I'm.

Just got my finger inside the cavity kind of to give support so that i can just going to scrape not sure too much anything you see, shiny, just scrape it off push it off, and that is a descaled trout. Basically, that is ready for the frying pan.

If you did want to cook it this way, but we have some more preparation: steps for what we’re going to do, rinse it all off and put it in an ice bath a little bit of salt water for a little while, just till you're ready to freeze it or cook it.

You could do overnight as long as you, don't have too much salt. Now we've brought the fish home. We went fishing, we caught all the fish, we brought them home, you cleaned them, and now we’re going to make them into fish tacos.

So Clay, what's our first step? What are we going to do so here's, our trout right here and size that wasn't all of them? We had a couple more pan size is the right size. As you might say, any size would be good, but pan size works best.

Okay, oh, we’re going to get them cooked up here. This is kind of a two-part sort of a deal. If you wanted to eat these trout by themselves, you could do it this way. This is how i like to do it, but we’re going to use this way to prepare the fish for our fish tacos.

Okay, excellent! We’re going to season up the cornmeal here, just a little bit just a little bit of pepper and salt like that not needed, but it's, pretty good. As you see for the fish tacos, we won't really even be actually using this or eating this.

It's just kind of a way to keep the fish away from the pan. We're going to coat our Rocky Mountain High Rainbow Trout with cornmeal, we're going to get them on the skillet. Here's how you can check the skillet temperature.

 We already have it on. Just a couple. Drops of water and you can see the little drops of water dancing in the bottom of the pan. That's. Perfect. We’re going to add some no stick here and the idea here is, main thing is you want a hot pan, hot, hot oil, for the travel? So here we go? We’re going to just dip these real, quick, just get them all covered and roll them in the cornmeal season. The cornmeal you can take this off.

We’re going to cook these for about seven minutes and we’re going to cook them all the way through on one side. That is why we are going to have a lid, so we're going to put the lid on, so they are basically going to cook the trout on the pan in the pan.

For about seven and a half minutes, we flipped them probably cook them. For about another five, we're going to test for doneness got a toothpick. We’re just going to press the toothpick into the fish. It is very forgiving soft.

They are done. I'm, going to turn the heat off. We are going to quickly and gently just move them over here to a paper towel just to drain and cool just a bit, and these are ready to eat. I mean these are ready to serve if you chose to and we'll show you how we can, basically de-bone these fish  very easily and quickly not have to mess with  filleting in the field.

Like a lot of people do now. We’re going to get ready to remove the fillets from the bone. This is kind of how it goes again fully cooked. Just they're hot. There's one, and there's two there, you be totally boneless.

We can remove the fins. Let's just get one over here. You probably want to have a little bit more room. Now we're just going to flip them over and the skin. We’re going to remove our fish tacos and it will just peel right up like that.

More meat, just falling off just gently pull it away with the fork. Let's, see what we got: nothing like fresh, cold, water, rocky mountain trout and that is delish. We’re going to be making Sandi salsa and Sandi's guacamole.

This is really easy to make. We’re going to start with the salsa, so what we're going to do. We have about a cup of tomato. I'm going to put in about a half of a medium onion. Next, we have two jalapeno peppers and one Santa Fe green chili, and we're going to put that in here what I'm using basically is a food processor.

So we're going to put it in here and we're doing this live so hopefully we don't. Have it. Hopefully you don't, have any problems. Don't want to chop. It up too much okay, that was pretty easy. Did you see that i get asked all the time to make this for the relatives at relatives, houses and stuff when I'm out visiting, because I've been making this for years.

I’ve got our main mix, we're going to add a teaspoon of minced garlic and then in here we have a half a teaspoon of dried cilantro and we have a quarter teaspoon of pepper and a quarter teaspoon of salt.

So we're going to mix that in and mix it all together. I think i have a bowl that maybe a little bit too small. I probably needed something a little bit bigger to mix it in. We’re going to mix it together.

 I'll pour it back in this bowl, so got it all together. You want to mix it good. The cilantro, I actually grew in the garden, and then I dried it and you can dry cilantro in your oven. So if you want to keep it for the winter, so anyway, we're going to put that back in there like that, then we're going to make Salsa. You can't have Salsa, if you don’t have guacamole.

So what we're going to do we’ve got one large Hass avocado, we're going to put it in our bowl kind of smash It down got it all cut up. Okay, so this is super, super, super easy. You will like this.

It's, so easy to make. Once you have your base of your salsa and what we're doing. Is we're working on fish tacos right now, so i needed to make some salsa and some guacamole up in order to put it with our fish tacos.

So we've mashed up our Hass avocado one large. Then we’re going to make Sandi salsa  -- three tablespoons one two three: all you have to do is mix that up like that. You can put it in another bowl like if you're serving it.

You want it to look a little bit nicer. All you do put it in your bowl, your nice serving bowl. Okay, like that, we're going to taste, our salsa, it's really good. I love guacamole, though. That's Clay reaching in there grabbing some , not too shabby.

Now we're at the stage where we are going to cook the fish. We’re going to put in some onions that we've already sauteed. We’re going to add a little bit of taco seasoning and then we’re going to be ready to put them in the taco shells and I add all the condiments and everything.

So we’ve got a little bit of water in our pan. If you can see that just a little bit of water, we’re going to take our fish and we're just going to gently put it in the fish is going to break up a little while we're doing this. That's okay, we have half of a sauteed onion. Here it's already been sauteed already. So now we’re just going to mix it all together, like that. We’re going to take some taco seasoning, and this is kind of going to be your choice as to how much you add, I like to kind of get a color in there, a little orange color.

So then we've just got it kind of on medium high, and we're just going to stir it up. Let it all get mixed together, like that. It's, naturally going to break up so you don't need to worry about breaking up the fish.

While you're doing this, it's, going to break up these fish tacos. You can use pretty much any kind of fish. We're using rainbow trout, but you could use any kind of a white fish, a halibut. You know anything like that.

Whatever you have. I've had friends that have made them out of crappie bluegill, so any kind of fish that you like you can actually make these out of. But we're in Colorado, so we decided to make them out of rainbow trout.

The fish is done. We're going to put it into our tacos, so put a little bit of the meat in the bottom of the fish. We’re making three tacos here, put that in and then basically you just add whatever condiments you want.

 So I kind of like to do the cheese next, so it melts a little bit. So we'll do that, then we can add some lettuce, like that, some tomatoes on top and some olives and there you go. We have our fish tacos and we are done with them, and all you have to do now is add some of Sandi Salsa and Sandi's Guacamole right here and you're set.

That’s how to catch trout, how to clean trout, and how to cook trout.