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My wife was very much enjoying herself last night when she was ten up on me in our smelt fishing "derby" She ended up icing over 106 of them. I lost count at 90 something. We got over 200 smelt in about an hour and a half jigging. It was a lot of fun.
Here's how I cooked them tonight for my wife's first time eating smelt.
First ya get the smelt. Here's a screen shot of a video I took inside the two-man shanty. My wife and I with our four-year old daughter.
I like to use scissors to clean the smelt. First, I snip off their heads on an angle, just behind the front fins. Then, a snip up the abdomen. I keep putting the smelt back in the fridge while working on them so they never get warm. After all the heads are off and the abdomens opened, I flick out the entrails with a finger and then rinse them all with cold water, but don't rinse them
too much. People rinse fish far too much. Washes off the flavor!
fish heads... fish heads...
While the smelt are back in the fridge, I get the cocktail sauce going:
Chop up some shallots and a tomato and have some lemon on the ready. Naturally, you'll need some ketchup and some horseradish.
Squeeze in some lemon and add horseradish to your liking:
Next, get your breading stuff ready. Make sure you
season your flour well. Lots of seasoning!!! Beat a couple eggs and season up the breadcrumbs real good, too.
Now you are ready to get breading. It's not
that hard of a process, but requires some finesse to do it effectively.
I HIGHLY recommend that you keep one hand wet and one hand dry. Not easy to do, but once you get used to it, you won't be able to do it any other way and you can make fun of your helpers who end up breading their fingers.
It is imperative that your oil is HOT before you add the fish. Test the oil by just dipping a little corner of a smelt in. If it doesn't fizzle, the oil is too cool. If it crackles and spatters and it is smoking- guess what? Yep, it's too dang hot.
Try to add as many smelt as the pan can handle comfortably as fast as you can so they all cook uniformly. Don't overload the oil. Leave enough room for 'em to fry up nice.
Let 'em go until they get browned up a bit and they start to float.
Then, remove to a plate of paper towels for a quick moment before serving with the cocktail sauce.
If I think I am going to have them again soon, I put the breading material in the fridge with plastic wrap between each one, like so:
You can keep it like this for three or four days, but I wouldn't hang on it much longer than that. Typically, when I get a good haul of smelt, I will eat them everyday until they are gone if I can. If there is too many for me to eat up before they go bad, I will freeze them, but I prefer to eat them fresh.
I buy plastic wrap in 2000' rolls. I use it for all kinds of stuff. It's handy!
Sometimes I like my smelt beer battered, but most of the time, it's breaded smelt for me. And I want my cocktail sauce to be hot enough to make me cough if i don't respect it.
Bon Appetit and Fish On!!!
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