Fish Stock

Several of favorite fish recipes call for fish stock or clam juice. Clam juice is available at any grocery store and is a good substitute. If you have a large stockpot and a little time on your hands, making your own fish stock can be mighty rewarding. That big turkey fryer sitting in the shed is perfect.

One nice big grouper, snapper or cobia carcass is great for stock. Clean the carcass, removing the gills and innards. Chop backbone into three big chunks and leave the head whole if it will fit in the stockpot. If you haven’t all ready, remove the cheeks, they are tasty. Put the carcass in the stockpot, ideally this should half fill the pot. Add celery, onions and carrots, depending on the size of the pot, about two cups of each. Use the celery tops and you can leave the onionskins on if you like, this will all be strained.

Add enough water to cover, the about half again more. I only add about one table spoon of salt and a small hand full of black pepper corns, don’t add too much salt this will be reduced.

Fire the cooker and bring everything to a boil. Then reduce heat to a nice simmer, ice down the beer, and relax. Two to three hours of simmering is perfect, add a little water as need to keep the fish covered.

Any time after two hours you can turn the heat off and let the pot cool enough to handle. You can run up to the store and get some cheese cloth while it cooling since I forgot to tell you ahead of time. Run in the house too, and grab a real big bowl.

Line the bowl with cheesecloth and pour in all that tasty stock, fold your cheesecloth up so no scales or bones escape lift out slowly. Now you have a great stock, that a bit thin. I reduce this stock by half and add salt to taste at the end of the reduction. Don’t over salt!

The stock will store in the freezer for months or the fridge for three days, use pint size containers for soups and cup size containers for sauces. This is a lot of work but if you have the time you’ll love having this stock on hand. Try this quick recipe to see:

Bring one pint of stock to a rapid boil. In two small soup bowls or cups put about 2 to 3 ounces of fresh fish fillets, one green onion, cut fancy in three inch long strips, one mushroom button slice real thin, and a little fresh grated ginger. Pour the boiling stock over the fish in each bowl and let is rest for five minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. This is pretty fancy looking and very tasty, if you have east coast Sheep head for the fish, you’ll be loving life. Snapper, grouper and hogfish are great too. Just keep the filet strips under a half inch thick, and they poach perfectly.