Pan Fried Trout with Lemon Butter Sauce

Pan Fried Trout with Lemon Butter Sauce

This quick and easy recipe for pan-fried trout with lemon butter sauce is something you will come back to again and again.

It is so easy to make and tastes like something you might order in an expensive restaurant. And yet it has to be one of my quickest and easiest recipes with the minimum of ingredients.

Rainbow trout recipe

I made this meal with a fresh rainbow trout that I picked up at our local Thursday market. I love trout as it has such a delicate taste.

It was already in a double fillet form ready to cook. All I needed to do was separate the fish fillets from each other and remove the fins with a sharp knife.

You can follow the same instructions in the recipe card below to cook a brown trout or even a sea trout. The lemon butter sauce is a favourite with all types of seafood, and goes well with many types of fish.

As you know, most fish improves vastly with a touch of lemon and butter.

The beauty of this recipe is that it is so simple. This recipe is really perfect if you happen to be camping by a lake and happen to catch some trout. Throw in the pan with some butter, basil, salt and pepper and you are done!

How to make a lemon butter sauce

Well, really this is not very difficult. I just used some salted Irish butter and added some lemon juice and crushed basil leaves with a tiny bit of seasoning. But you could also use garlic and chopped fresh parsley instead of basil if you prefer, but I thought that using garlic might mask the delicious taste of the trout.

A tasty butter lemon just adds a bit of decadence to the meal and helps improve almost any fish type.

If you want to be even more decadent you could try a Béarnaise sauce instead, which also goes well with trout. But I think this recipe for lemon butter sauce for fish is simplicity itself, and certainly easier and quicker to make.

Grilled fish in Lemon Butter Sauce

In this recipe, I fry the fish in a skillet on the hob. But you could, of course, also grill the trout, either on a grill or under a grill (or broiler as you American’s call it).

It depends a bit on what type of fish you are cooking. Also which facilities you have available and (in our case in Ireland), the weather!  

Some fish cooks better in tin foil and others are just fine on the grill itself. But for a piece of delicate trout, I would be tempted to use a griddle or a skillet so as to have more control over the cook. 

Whatever you use, keep an eye on your fish and try not to overcook it!

If you need some cooking equipment for camping, why not try Uno Casa ? They have some great cooking gear like this camping set, for example:

If you do try this recipe, please let me know how you get on in the comments section below!

How to make pan-fried Trout with Lemon Butter Sauce

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