Page 120 - SOM Summer 2017

chow | local habit

DINNER things he likes about cooking when you’re camping. Hite reminds, “You
don’t have to be fancy to make great food. Good ingredients make
good food.” Hite’s recipe also utilizes the single greatest camp-cooking
hack of all time: aluminum foil.
While lunch is often a sandwiches kind of affair, our dinner
recipe is for people who like fishing and camping together, and it One side note that is important to mention when you’re looking at the
comes from Mike Hite, head chef at Elements in Medford. A Southern trout recipe is a quick reminder on cooking with beer. Beer is great in
Oregon native, Hite likes to head to the hills at least a couple times cooking when done with lighter beers like lagers and pilsners, or very
each summer. dark beers like porters and stouts. I would suggest avoiding cooking
with hoppy beers like IPAs. Hops might be great to drink and offer a
“I like to fish when I’m camping,” says Hite, “and nothing’s better after nice balance of bitterness to a malt backbone, but when cooked, the
a day of trout fishing than beer poached trout.” bitterness is concentrated and magnified. I am definitely not the first
(or the last) person to ruin a perfectly good beer cooked meal using
Hite’s recipe is simple, and lets the ingredients shine. It’s one of the the wrong beer.

BEER POACHED TROUT

2 lemon sliced, ½ inch • Clean your trout, but don’t make fillets out of it.
• Salt and pepper both the inside and the outside of the fish.
4 shallot slices, ¼ inch
• Fill the body cavity with the lemon, shallot, garlic, and butter.
2 garlic cloves, whole
• Make a thick foil “boat” for each fish, and put ¼ of a can of light beer (Hite prefers PBR) in with the fish.
1 tbsp butter
• Close up the “boat” and double wrap it so the beer stays in.
kosher salt • Put it on the coals for about 15 to 18 minutes, and finish your beer while you wait.
black pepper

118 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | summer 2017