How to Grill Fish in Aluminum Foil Packets
Grilling foil fish packets with a beer braise adds a new dimension to this easy meal cooked on the grill. Using only a few fresh ingredients and a large sheet of foil, you can make these easy and delicious foil fish packets on the grill, BBQ or campfire.
(Closed Captioning available for this video)
Foiled Fish Packets Ingredients
3 – 4 Cod filets
3 – 4 sprigs fresh Tarragon
2 – 3 potatoes
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1 large onion, sliced
1 stick butter, quartered
1 bottle ale beer
salt & pepper
3 – 4 sheets large aluminum foil
Video Transcript:
Presenter:
Hey, everyone, today we’re cooking grilled fish packets on the Cooking Everything Outdoors show.
So what’s this all about?
Well, we’re taking foil packets which I’ve shown you how to use and we’re going to take some really savory wholesome ingredients.
Awful big words for some good stuff and we’re going to pack it in a packet.
We’re going to pour it a little bit of beer in there as moisturizer and we’re going to cook it over direct heat for just a little bit.
And then we’re going to offset it into indirect heat.
Now, you can use either a gas grill or a charcoal grill.
I’m using a charcoal grill this time.
Don’t waste any money on lump charcoal or anything like that.
Just use some basis briquettes.
That’s all you’re going to need for this recipe.
You’ll need some fish fillets.
Now, what I’m using is cod.
I’m using 3.
This recipe’s actually enough for 4 packets, but I have 3 really nice cod fillets.
We’ll be using 3 to 4 fresh tarragon sprigs.
These are sierra gold potatoes.
We’re going to be slicing those up.
I have 4 big cloves of minced garlic.
1 minced shallot.
1 onion, fairly thinly sliced.
A whole stick of butter in 2 tablespoon chunks.
And I’m also using some Kona Brewing Company, their Big Wave Golden Ale.
Just about any ale would work just fine in this recipe.
And you’ll need some aluminum foil, and salt and pepper.
So to get started we’ll need to cut up our potatoes.
Now, you can approach these two different ways.
You can slice it this way or lengthwise.
I’m going to slice them lengthwise.
First thing I want to do is just cut a little bit off the bottom.
And that’s going to stabilize the potato as I’m cutting it.
So there’s a tip to take with you so you don’t lose any fingertips.
And we’re just going to make some real nice slices.
You can see how beautiful these potatoes are.
So you’re going to need 3 to 4 sheets of aluminum foil.
This is the Reynolds foil for the grill.
It’s really good stuff.
I like it.
They sent me this box to try out.
I’ve been very, very happy with it.
This is about 18 inches by, give or take, 12 to 15 inches.
One packet for each fish you’re going to do.
We’re doing three.
So I have three sheets of aluminum foil.
Okay.
So, now this aluminum foil has two sides.
It has a non-stick side and a regular shiny side which you’re used to seeing.
If you want optionally you could take some spray and spray your sheet.
And then what you want to do is you want to lay some potato slices out.
And this is going to be our base for our fish and take a onion slice or two, lay that down.
And you want to take one of your fillets, lay that on top of that.
Take a chunk of your butter on top of that and sprinkle it with some of your shallot, garlic, salt and pepper to taste whatever that means.
And then place one sprig of fresh tarragon over the top of that.
Now, we need to fold this up in such a way that we can then add our beer to this.
So what I’m going to do is take and fold my packet this way, tightly as possible and fold this end up.
And then 1/4th of the beer goes in the packet.
What does 1/4th look like?
Looks like about that.
And then go back and seal this as tightly as possible.
So, now our packets are made and our grill is set up for indirect heat.
That’s 2-zone cooking.
I have a non-heat zone and then I have a hot zone.
I’m going to put the packets over the coals to start with.
And then you need to listen.
And when they start to sizzle and boil, that’s when we want to remove the packets and put them over on the indirect side.
Packets, directly over the coals.
Alright, you can hear our packets sizzling now.
When you get to that point, I just want to slide them over, indirect heat.
We’re going to cook this for approximately 20 minutes until everything’s tender and opaque inside.
About halfway through that I’m going to rotate the packet around, but at this point I’m going to put the lid on and set the timer for 10 minutes.
Let it cook and then I’ll give it a spin.
Okay, so this has been cooking about 10 minutes.
And what I want to do is just rotate the packets in.
The reason I’m doing that is simply that there is more heat on this head end than tail end.
And I want these to cook evenly.
So I’ll just give them… I can already smell this, it’s incredible.
So we’re just going to give them a quick flip and then cook them for about 10 minutes more.
And then we’ll take a peek on one of them and see if they’re ready yet.
Alright, so we’ve been cooking for a total of 20 minutes.
And we really need to take a look in one of these packets and get an idea of where we’re at because before our packet cooking it’s somewhat of a guessing game and you do have to peek.
That’s going to be really hot and hopefully, I won’t get third-degree burns doing this but we’ll try to unroll one of these very carefully.
Take a look and see if we can see… oh, yeah, that to me is looking pretty darned… oh, flavorful, that’s for sure.
These fish looks opaque.
Get a fork in there real quick and take a check and see how we’re doing here.
And, yeah, maybe we got a little bit more to go.
I’m going to cook this for about 10 more minutes.
Well, I took another peek and after 30 minutes these are ready to go.
So let’s plate one of these up and see how we did.
Okay, let’s open this packet up here.
Oh my!
The tarragon just comes through so nicely in this.
There’s somewhat sweet aromatic flavor.
Aroma I should say.
But that is hard aluminum foil, but look at there.
And there you have it.
That’s grilled fish packets, just absolutely phenomenal, easy to do and really quick on the grill.
I hope you enjoyed this.
But before I go I need to take a second to give a shout out to my sponsors, www.OutdoorCooking.com, www.CampChef.com and www.IslandGrillstone.com, because, as you know and I always tell you, this show would not be possible without their sponsorship.
So go take a visit to them.
Go say hi.
Tell them Gary sent you.
And buy something.
I’ll see you soon.
