Chalk Stream trout, golden beetroot, sour cream, elderflower

  • medium
  • 6
  • 60 minutes plus 5 hours for curing and overnight pickling and drying time
5.00

This light starter from Stu Deeley involves home-cured and smoked trout, which is served with a very simple beetroot sauce and garnished with pickled beetroot and trout roe. The smoking time will vary depending on the thickness of your trout fillets – in the restaurant they took 6 minutes.

First published in 2024

Ingredients

Metric

Imperial

Cured trout

Pickled golden beetroot

  • 1 golden beetroot
  • 75g of rice wine vinegar
  • 30g of water
  • 25g of caster sugar
  • 5g of elderflower cordial

Beetroot sauce

Trout roe

  • 25g of olive oil
  • 25g of trout roe

Garnish

Equipment

  • Smoking chips
  • Smoker

Method

1

Mix together the salt, sugar and lemon zest

2

Take a large piece of cling film, and cover with half of the salt and sugar mixture. Top with the trout, and then add the other half of the salt and sugar mixture to the top of the trout. Fold over the cling film, making sure the fillet is completely covered in the salt and sugar

3

Transfer the fish to the fridge, and leave to cure for 5 hours

4

Once cured, remove the trout from the fridge, and wash off the salt and sugar

5

Transfer to a tray and leave overnight in the fridge, covered with a cloth

6

Next prepare the pickled beetroot, which also needs to be left overnight. Slice the beetroot very thinly, and cut out into shapes, using a flower cutter if you have one

7

Mix together the remaining pickle ingredients, and add the beetroot. Leave to pickle overnight

  • 75g of rice wine vinegar
  • 30g of water
  • 25g of caster sugar
  • 5g of elderflower cordial
8

For the beetroot sauce, simply mix together all of the ingredients, and then transfer to the fridge to chill

9

The next day, smoke the cured trout over smoking chips until done to your liking – this will depend on the size of your fillets

10

Mix together the olive oil and roe with 250g beetroot sauce

  • 25g of olive oil
  • 25g of trout roe
11

To plate, add some of the beetroot sauce to the plate. Add the trout and garnish with pickled beetroot, roe, borage and violas

First published in 2024

Chef Stuart Deeley cooked in some of Birmingham’s best kitchens before making a name for himself as the winner of MasterChef: The Professionals 2019. Today, he celebrates hearty, unpretentious cooking at his restaurant Smoke.

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