Tips for grilling fish on charcoal?

My wife is pretty firm about improving our diet, and given I almost starting buying Guiness in kegs in 2020 I could lose a few pounds myself.

So fish at least three times each week. I did Ahi steaks on charcoal Sunday no problem. Tonight it was rockfish with some herbs in an olive oil marinade, (scallion greens, garlic, capers, thyme). I punted and used the gas grill (horror) because of the metal shield over the burner flame. I was pretty sure the olive would have lit right up on charcoal.

I "could" use a griddle over charcoal, but frying is verboten until we fit back into our prepandemic pants. Butter for fish marinade is verboten until we fit back into our respective prepandemic pants.

I am leaning towards building a new charcoal basket to fit inside a Weber, just big enough to hold maybe half a chimney of lit coals, with some kind of roof over the firebox (but under the grate) to keep the dripping oil from direct flame so I can grill cook on the grate. However once the roof metal gets hot enough the dripping olive oil could just light off from the heat without direct exposure to flame. If I build it I will have to heat the grate roofless, then remove the grate, place the roof, replace the grate, blah blah.

So I am asking, what have you got? I want to fit back into my prepandemic pants so I can go back to cooking with butter. I like butter. And I like Guiness. And brisket and ribeye. I don't like buying bigger pants everytime I go to the store.

I did read up one website where the author started his cook over the live charcoal to get good grill marks, but then rotated the grate instead of flipping the fish, so the cook started direct and ended indirect. Anyone tried that?

Also, what wood chunks do you like on fish? I have moved on from smoldering chunks and really like glowing red pieces of hickory, white oak and apple coals under or beside my steaks.

No idea what is on for Thursday. Swordfish or Ahi 3x per week is not in the grocery budget, I am going to have to deal with the flaky fragile stuff often.

There is some good news already. Alder and salmon are a gift from God. They go together like male and female. But I have not been happy with alder on any other seafood. Alder is OK on shrimp leftovers I eat tomorrow, but is wasted tonight.

I did the seared Ahi Sunday on hardwood lump with some glowing red/orange beech coals and it was awesome. Just American beech, not the more expensive Euro beech from a different genus. I had done a batch of open fire chili this summmer and found beech to be very very mild, kind of wasted on all the strong flavors in good chili; but on seared Ahi it worked really well, for me.

If you know a wood worker with two or more floor standing tools like tablesaw, planer, drill press, lathe, joiner, dust collector or mortiser, ask for beech scraps in the golfball to baseball size range. If you can get some white oak without photographic proof of your humiliation, do it.

White oak is quite pricy, beech is notably inexpensive, among eastern North American hardwoods.

White oak, don't bother with red oak unless you just have to try it. White oak is awesome (bold flashing caps) on beef. If you just have to try red oak, cut a Russet potato into half inch slices with a little salt and pepper so your cows will eat it after you surrender, you will only be out 50 cents and some time.

For white oak in the chimney just put enough charcoal in the bottom to get the wood lit. It is going to give you blue flames for a good fifteen to twenty five minutes before it settles down enough (no more blue flame) to make coals in a few minutes so you can add more charcoal to the chimney now. Your wife will do that special thing she only does a few times a year when you serve a ribeye on white oak.

American beech will burn down to coals in a chimney fairly quickly, faster than hickory. I generally fill the chimney halfway with charcoal, toss on the beech (or hickory or apple) chunks, light it off and then pour all into the burn basket as soon as the blue flame is gone, about ten minutes. By the time the grate is hot, the beech will be burnt down to glowing coals.

I am putting my alder aside for salmon only while I try beech on all the other seafoods. Including these fragile flaky fish fillets on my immediate event horizon.

Thanks for your input, I want to get off gas and back onto charcoal ASAP. And butter. I miss butter already, but I am not going to miss these pants.

 

hahha..great writing.

get one of those baskets that sandwich the fish? i watched and ended up helping a vendor do this in Italy and it was fun and easy. he would dip rosemary sprigs in olive oil and brush it around on the fish. this was a WHOLE fish, btw. you can use the same basket to sandwich fish wrapped in things, like banana leaves.

seared AHI. yum. i actually do this. but i do it on my charcoal chimney starter thing. i just put a grill ontop of the cylinder when the cheap briquettes are super hot. use long tongs. trust me on this. and move fast. i would need a thermocoupler to measure the temps, but i bet it is up there..way up there.

i dont know about wood and burning wood. i use briquettes and chunk charcoal.

 

The baskets work great, use them often.

 

Throw it out and get a steak.

 

Wanna loose weight and still enjoy ribeyes, red meat, fish, butter etc? Look at the keto way of eating. It teaches you the right kinds of fat to eat.
Now fish on the grill I use those grilling baskets so the fish don't fall apart when you flip it. I also like mesquite wood chunks for some flavor. I also like ro poach fish on the grill, place fish on aluminum foil, season with your favs, add onion slices, lemon, and I like mushrooms and tomatoes. Then close the foil up and toss on the grill.
But seriously, look at you tube about how to eat keto, I've lost weight and don't do without the foods I love. What it means is you cut carbs and especially sugar to almost nothing and eat the right kinds of fat. Look for Dr berg for starters, he explains things really well, then you'll see others popping up. Robert Cywes, John Bergman.........

 

I too have always had good luck wrapping in foil. If done properly, little to no drippings and fish falls off the bone if it's not fillets.

 

Good success on charcoal tonight. Thanks for the responses so far.

Since I last posted I have done two cooks on my old gasser. One was "blackened" cod using a homemade blackened powder with olive oil to adhere the blackening to the cod fillet. Dripped a fair bit onto the flame shield, but no inferno. For the other I hit the various food blogs until I came up with a mess of herbs I had in the house, minced that into some olive oil, drips on the gasser flame shield, no inferno. Both have made the repeat list, two thumbs up from the wife.

So grilling fragile flaky white fish is easy, if you are willing to cook on gas. Just mix up whatever you want for herbs in some olive oil and have at it. Pay attention, flaky fish should really only be flipped once. I want a scrupulously clean grate, freshly oiled. With just a couple cooks you should be golden if you don't walk away in the middle of the cook. When each filet is cooked a bit more than halfway through, flip them all. As the individual fillets are cooked through, pull them to a cambro. I have been pulling when the flakes just begin to separate and 5-10 minutes later out of the cambro I am golden.

I have been buying two filet at a time from my local grocers. Two rockfish filet is dinner for two and a couple lunches ($3.59 for both with card at my local Kroger tonight). Cod filet are a little bit bigger and thicker. Now that I am on charcoal by method is to cut each filet into spatula sized pieces. For Rockfish I have the chest piece, about spatula sized, the belly meat (smaller than a spatula) and the main backstrap, about spatula sized. I could buy a bigger spatula, but I don't want to. Both my local grocery chains carry tilapia. I have read a little bit about Chinese chicken coops with respect to tilapia and the country of origin on my local stuff is too small to read with my bifocals off, so I have left it in the case so far. Do check your filet for rib bones before your cook. Tweezers are a bit small, needlenose pliers are overkill, I use 4" surgical forceps because I have a blue million of them, whatever. Maybe mini needlenose would work good?

For shrimp on charcoal I use a tall narrow fire basket, and lay the shrimp on the grate so the tails are outside the basket. As the butter and oil on the shrimp melts and runs it (mostly) drips off the tail fins -beside the fire basket- so inferno is minimized. This isn't going to work with fillets.

I do have a grill basket, it holds a split (spatchcocked) chicken just fine. I don't like chicken, we grew too many of them on the farm when I was a kid; and I can't regularly get whole gutted flaky white fish here. I can get gutted wild caught Aslaskan salmon seasonally, just a slit down the belly with the eyes and fins and teeth still on, I know how to deal with those. brine- alder- ecstasy.

So I left the oil off tonight's rockfish. For the cook I jest patted them dry, sprinkled with salt and pepper and let them come up towards room temp as the I got the grill going. I am out of beech, so I used white oak, about three paint stir sticks (for one gallon cans) worth. Once the lit chimney was in the firebasket I put the oak on to get going while the grate heated.

Heat was uneven compared to gas (Duh!) and I ended up flipping twice so I could move stuff around. Flipping the second time, it is going to stick when you go to take it off. I will run a bit harder herd on fire management next time, and likely clean and oil the open spaces on the grate before the second flip; and keep my fish pieces the same size as a regular spatula. I would say high heat. Holding your hand four inches above the grate for a slow count of three would be somewhere between stupid and borderline personality disorder. I can't see a good reason to run these low and slow because there is very little connective tissue (and no fat) to break down. Grilling.

I served tonight's sauce on the side, but got two thumbs up again. I am going to run a couple more sauces on the side, but once I have a winner I am strongly inclined to sauce the filet as they go into the cambro. For this one I used use 1/4 cup olive oil, 2T lemon juice and some herbs. I made it last night and stuck it in the fridge, the olive oil congealed overnight. For the next one I will make the sauce in the morning and leave it out on the countertop while I am at work during the day. For a cambro I am using a 5x8 inch pyrex and a bath towel. Leftovers go straight into the fridge in the pyrex.

 

Pulled out a keeper today. I did a one pound filet of skinless halibut on hardwood lump wth some glowing beech chunks, just salt and pepper on the fish. That was good by itself, cooked just to the flakes starting to open up and then cambro for 5-10 minutes.

For the sauce I scalded 2 t white wine in a small sauce pan to boil the alcohol off, and then added that to:

1/4 c EVO
1t minced fresh garlic
1/8c chopped fresh parsley
1/8c finely chopped arugula - I used one of the spicier lettuces in our garden
1/2t oregano
1t vinegar.

I think I found it on the food and wine website. Keeper.

 

Do you have a dog? Get one, one that is hyperactive, and walk them for an hour daily. Then go to Costco, I hear they are having a sale on ribeye.

Enjoying your style of writing though!

Fwiw, I find some fish are best baked, some best pan fried, some go well on the grill. The only one that seems to be awesome no matter how you do it is salmon. For the purposes of this response, I'll use my salmon grilling method, in this case, a side. I'll set up a "cold" half of the grill, keep the skin on (and down) and never flip it. I start by heating one half of the Weber round grill, then spin it 180 degrees so that when I put the fish down, it's onto a very hot grill, but not directly over the flames. I'll keep the grill open long enough to season, then throw a table spoon of black pepper corns directly into the coals, then cover for about 20 minutes, then I get a friend or my wife to come out with a plate, and I pick it up with a pair of flexible spatulas

 

I'd bet my salmon in foil packets recipe would work on the grill. I pour some olive oil down first, then thinly sliced tomatoes, then the fish, then more tomato slices, then lemon slices. Then top with a bit of spiralized zucchini and/or potato, and bell pepper slivers. Add a little bit of PF Chang's Sweet Chili sauce and seal tightly. The liquid from the tomatoes and the chili sauce makes it take about 30-35 minutes with no burning. For the grill, probably keep the packets over direct heat about half the time then move them over.

 

For Salmon and Tuna Steaks - right on the grate - use lump coal at high temps.

Cook the Salmon to 125 and the Tuna to 118... caution with the Tuna it will overcook at any higher temp.

Buy a good insta-read-thermameter.

 

When I only cooked outdoors on charcoal previous to getting a pellet grill, my small little weber with a cast iron skillet was perfect for grilling everything, including fish. Only way to go imo.

 

The basket will work, you can also get a stainless grill topper pan which allows you to grill loose veggies too.

If your fish is on fire though you’re using too much oil.

Another option is a cast iron pan with light olive oil. You get a great sear that way but you have to preheat it thoroughly.

 

Corrrrrrrrrrrect sir... I bought a set of these and they work well for veggies, bread dough, could work for fish etc..