Best Ever – Baked Snapper.
Dish
Best Ever Baked Snapper (Traditional Pacific Style)
People
(SERVES 6)
Long Hot Summer days require light meals high on taste, fresh seasonal and not to stodgy.
New Zealand has great wild food and great seafood so get into a fish market and make a choice of a healthy looking fish without any slime or nose.Perfect for the early summer barbecue with friends too. We have been all over the Pacific and the fresh seasonal snapper fishery can inspire all of us to create a wonderful seafood feast.
Ingredients
- Whole snapper, scaled, gutted, heads removed
- Minced garlic
- Minced shallots or onion
- Lemon zest
- Rough chopped herbs: basil, coriander, parsley, tarragon etc
- Butter (chopped in pieces)
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Recipe
Directions
Wash and scale your fresh snapper.
Take the snapper and lightly score the skin on both sides.
Now it’s just a case of covering the outside and the cavity of the snapper with all the ingredients. It’s very rustic and just go with your instincts. Be generous with all the ingredients.
Carefully wrap the snapper in plenty of tin foil, place in a roasting dish and cook in a 180 degree oven until done. The size of your snapper will give you a good indication on how long it will take to cook through.
Check after 30 minutes and then in 10 minute intervals, there after.
To serve, open up the foil and maneuver onto a platter. Serve with wedges of lemon, and plenty of good crusty bread with lashings of butter.
Catching your own snapper is naturally the best way of all. If you have the time. Cast as close to the rocks as you can without snagging and work the lure back to the boat.Most strikes occur in the first few metres of retrieval as snapper bolt from their hiding places to attack the lure. For bait fishing, many fishos love to anchor, berley up hard in the shallows, and wait for the big boys to come to them.Summer fishing, especially on hot bright days, rainy days and incoming tide seem to have an advantage. Spots that consistently produce bigger snapper – those over 6kg – are like gold dust. If you know of one, keep it close to your chest. The really big snapper are more likely to be solitary – they might be away out wide or they could be mooching in close – but it’s unlikely they’ll be there with lots of other snapper.