Cooking Whole Red Snapper

The last few weeks have been very busy with research and a bit of traveling.  Lots of changes are happening with me and Chris, but one thing has definitely not changed: our culinary interest in learning about new foods and new recipes.  This weekend we set out on an adventure to learn how to cook an entire fish (yes, head and all).  After watching several videos and reading many, many recipes, we decided to follow Alton Brown's recipe.  He uses striped bass, but we knew we were just going to pick whatever was fresh at Central Market.

To begin, we realized we were going to need a roasting pan of sorts.  The closest thing we had was a flat sheet pan or a small clear 8x8 pyrex pan.  In last minute trip to Bed Bath and Beyond, we picked up a very nice Calphalon Tri Ply 14'' Roaster.

Interestingly it came with a rack and lifters which will be perfect for roasting chickens or our first turkey this fall. :)

Now that the pan had been secured, we set off to Central Market to buy a fish. As a side note, we had also heard that in Houston another great place to buy fresh fish was J & J's Fish Market.  Next time we will probably check that out.  For now, back to Central Market.  The guy behind the fish counter (I believe David was his name) was so nice when we told him we wanted to buy two whole red snappers.  

He offered to de-scale, de-fin and clean up the snapper for us even though it took him a full 5-10 minutes (on a Saturday afternoon in Central Market with a line of people behind you, that was incredibly generous of him for taking the time to do that for us).  

After putting it on ice and getting the fish safely home, we started to chop of the aromatics needed for recipe.  You begin by making a bed of parsley and dill.

Add some sliced onion and lemon to the party.

Add fish on top of the aromatics.

Add more parsley and dill on top of the fish.

Cover with aluminum foil and place in a 500 degree oven for 35 minutes or until an internal temp of 120 degrees.

We served it on a bed of fresh parsley with some lemon.

It turned out to be delicious!  The only troubling thing was the bones.  Not sure if there is a polite way to spit out a bone? :)  Either way, I would definitely recommend this recipe to anyone interested in learning how to cook a whole fish.  We also had a lot of fun along the way.