So I'll be harvesting some stocked trout over the next week (note the optimism). I have yet to find a recipe for rainbow that I like. I have tried frying in butter or a mix of butter and oil with a cornmeal or flour coating - not so great (prefer crappie, bream, catfish or sea trout if it's fried). Any suggestions for a recipe? Maybe something baked or grilled?

I put mine on the smoker, pick the meat then vacume seal it in 1/2 cup lots and freeze. When I'm ready I combine one block cream cheese, one finely chopped shallot, 1/2 tbsp fresh thyme and some fresh ground black pepper. mix well then fold in the trout. Serve on plain water crackers for an appetizer.

Most of these stocker trout are so small, it's hardly worth frying em.

Thanks, Spiny Norman, that's very similar to how I cooked/served some small lake trout that I caught in Maine a year ago (used apple wood for the smoke - very mild smoke taste). I'll give the smoker a try with the rainbow.

1.Take the trout. gut it,scale it, cut the head, fins, and tail off.
2.on a piece of aluminum foil. place down lemon slices and dill,
3. put olive oil, salt and pepper all over your trout. inside and out.
4. lay trout on lemon and dill.
5. Place more lemon slices and dill on fish.
6. Wrap up the fish
7. Get your grill nice and hot.
8. Grill on high heat about 6 to 7 minutes per side. It don't take long. fish should flake easy. Then its done.
9. Enjoy.

If you don't have a grill. Do the same as above. but put the whole thing in a baking pan.Put in an oven on 350. Wait 10 to 12 minutes. The baking pan is a must. If not, Your oven will smell like fish for weeks. Don't ask me how I know.

gut em, cornbread em, fry em, eat

Thats good eatin right there.

The real small ones, eat whole like a sardine outta the tin...

yup

Trout are pretty mild flavored and delicate meat. No need to scale them either.

Gut them, leave the head on, brush with a little olive oil. A little salt and pepper. Heat your grill good and hot, brush the grates with a little oil and grill the fish whole. Time will depend on the size. For a small (<1lb) about 4 mins then turn once for three. Done.

I went with Spiny Norman's smoker suggestion with the first batch of trout of the season. Smoked 8 trout from 9 to 15 inches for 2.5 hours using apple wood. Will serve some tonight on top of sliced french bread toasted over coals with a sauce made from yogurt, dijon mustard, dill relish and Lousiana hot sauce. Along with a nicely chilled riesling, of course.

+1...

And don't forgot, with a frozen Mug with beer...

who else has problems getting the meat off the fish without all those pin bones in it? no matter how careful I am I still get em in every bite it seems

If they're properly cooked, you can easily remove the bones.
In my opinion, the cornbread/deepfry overpowers the delicate taste of a wild-caught trout, but for these hatchery raised specimens it might minimize the muddy taste they have. I prefer to bake or panfry in olive oil or butter with a little fresh lemon juice.

You can remove the dorsal fin and bones by pulling them out.

Hold it by the head (or spine if you've beheaded them), carefully insert a fork at the top to the spine, slowly leveraging the meat away from the ribs. Once you have one side done, slowly lift the spine up from the other side, again using your fork to pull the meat away from the ribs.

You now have two boneless filets of trout!

+1 on reply above.

Butter, sliced shallot, canned tomatoes, salt and pepper. Stuff whole trout with all ingredients. Add salt, pepper, butter and sprinkle with shallots to skin side. I use squeeze butter to make things simple. Wrap in tinfoil and grill. Fish flakes right off without the bones. Skin should also peel right off. Good eats.

I know Im cooking them properly ( I dont fry them either) I broil them in the oven basting them with olive oil so they dont dry out. The bones I mentioned are so small ( about the thinkness of hair) no matter how delicately I try to remove the meat from the ribs and spine there are always some left. They are so fine that I dont choke on them or anything, its just unpleasant. Maybe its the size of trout that we get in dallas? pretty small

To eat, take a fork and insert next to the backbone. Pull outward, toward the belly of the fish and away from the backbone, pulling the meat off and leaving the bones behind.

Salt and pepper the trout. Go light on the salt.

Warp the whole trout with a few thin slices of prosciutto, and bake for 30 mins. Until the prosciutto is crispy like bacon.

We use old bay, the juice of a lemon lime and orange, a little butter, and inside the fish some onion and any ki d of pepper you want, wrap in foil and either grill or bake

Pin bones are like coarse hairs. they won't choke you but they are an unpleasant part of eating trout. Filleting them doesn't avoid the tiny pin bones. cooking first and carefully pulling the meat from the backbone and ribs doesn't eliminate the tiny hair-like pin bones either. the pin bones are always present in the part of the meat near the rib cage but are absent from the tail meat. If you find the presence of pin bones distasteful, you can just eat the tail meat. Chefs use tweezers to remove the pin bones from large trout and salmon fillets.

the key is catching them, lol. just gut them, take off the head or leave it on, up to you. rosemary,garlic sea salt,onion powder,and a little bit of pepper inside and out. Heat up the grill, wrap in tinfoil and trow on the grill. Cooked some two days ago that way, turned out great. I did't spray the foil with anything, so when I opened it up the scin stuck to the foil. I was then able to pull the backbone out. It pretty much deboned the whole fish in one swipe.

A little olive oil, crushed pepper, stuffed with asparagus spears,wrapped in bacon and smoked!......yumm!

You think deep frying trout nuggets would soften up those pin bones enough to be edible? Sigh, my family wants their fish free of anything "fishy" LOL.

yes frying them disintegrates the bones

Thanks! Into the frying pan then. Since it is trout maybe I'll serve up the trout nuggets and ketchup with a slice of lemon ;-)

I have found that stocked trout do not taste near as good as wild Colorado mountain stream trout. so, if you are catching stocked trout and find the flavor a little offensive, you should still give wild trout a try. I gut the fish, scale them, then coat in cornmeal and fry them up.

I fillet mine, steam cook the bones in water for 1 hour, then use the created fish stock to make a fish veloute sauce. I bake the trout, and put the stock into a saucepan with some heavy whipping cream, fresh rosemary or thyme, and a blond roux to thicken the sauce. When your fish is done in the oven, pour your sauce over the trout and eat up! I know its a bit technical and time consuming for trout but its definitely worth it.