Bacon-wrapped cod

hi nick leahy from x restaurant here in atlanta and we're lucky enough to be at the big green egg culinary center today and we're going to be making a little bit of icelandic cod on the egg so one of the first things you want to think about when you're doing fish on the egg is what type of fish do i have is it is it a rich fish is it a fatty fish is it a lean fish is it a flaky fish and in this case cod is obviously a fairly lean flaky fish so doing something where you're putting the cod directly onto the grill is probably not going to work out well it can break up a lot and it can also dry the fish out because it is a very delicate fish so the first step that we're going to take is uh we're going to wrap our fish in bacon because bacon does make pretty much everything better so what we have here is just some nice thin cut bacon i know that's a little counterintuitive because we all love thick cut bacon but in this actual instance if you have thick cut bacon it might get crispy on the outside but it won't be cooked all the way through and you might have a little bit too much like rubbery fat if you have thick cut bacon and that's what you have at the house it's not a problem just take it and lay it out sort of shingling it like i'm doing here and then just take a kitchen rolling pin and roll it out so it thins out a little bit and it'll be fine but you want to just keep layering over so you have the same width as your loin of fishes and bacon shingled all the way down you know healthy fish cooking right the other thing that we're going to think about in this recipe is cod is a fairly mild fish and we're introducing a pretty strong flavor here in bacon so what we don't want to do is add a ton of different flavors because then we'll completely lose the the flavor of the fish um and what i always say to my cooks when you're cooking fish is you should just be adding a few simple things that will help accentuate the fish's flavor as opposed to losing the fish's flavor and especially since we're doing it on something like the egg you should almost think of that egg or the the smoke as another ingredient so you really don't want to have more than three or four flavors to your plate and the smoke is going to be one of those so you want to keep it fairly fairly simple so just lay your fillet and then start with the the last piece that you did and just take the end and roll it over piece by piece and this is the most important part of the rolling process you want to really tuck the bacon under this will help it from shrinking too much when it goes towards the heat and will make sure that it stays nice and tight once you get that first initial wrap over you can go a little bit quicker through it you don't have to take quite as much time but you can see what i'm saying even with the thin bacon here we have a couple of layers that would prevent it from cooking all the way through and getting nice and crispy because that's what we want here is that textural contrast for a soft piece of fish like cod the bacon is not only going to add fat and sort of render down through the fish to keep it really nice and moist but it's also going to crisp up on the outside so you'll have your textural contrast so it always makes the dish more interesting and then one little extra step that i like to do just to ensure that the bacon really adheres well to the fish just take a piece of plastic wrap lay your fish right down in the middle of it roll it over and then just roll it like this this will just help tighten the bacon around the fish and get the two to adhere together and if you can just let it sit like this for about 10 minutes it'll help the the fish and the bacon stay together it also helps sort of bunch in the ends of the fish so you'll get a more consistent cooking method you won't get the end of the fish that's kind of thinner getting dry or done before the middle of the fish so like i said let that sit for about 10 minutes and then we're ready to go to the egg and we're just going to do like i said we want to pair this with something very simple that just helps carry those flavors through so we have just some nice white creamer potatoes we've blanched these in salt water because you want to get the the seasoning through the potato for about 10 minutes and then we're going to finish them on the eggs so they pick up a little bit of that smoke so we're carrying that smoke flavor through the dish and then we're just going to take a little bit of arugula and dress it in olive oil and lemon juice just to give you some of that freshness and a little bit of acid to cut through right at the end of the dish so now we're ready to go to the egg we have our egg at about 400 degrees we have our cast iron on there for preheating um we're going to use that to start the fish in so we can render some of the bacon down and then we'll finish the uh fish with direct contact uh our fish has been rolled up nice and tight here so the bacon and the uh fish get a nice tight wrap and contact so now we'll just undo that and then you're gonna wanna find the seam where your bacon finishes okay because that's going to be what you want to put down because that'll sear it closed first and we're just going to take a couple of picks and go through to that seam side you don't want them to poke through because you want to have direct contact with the actual pan um so you don't want it to be holding the fish away from the pan but you just want to go through so that it'll sort of hold that end of the bacon in place while it sears the first time um no need for salt here there's enough salt in the bacon that'll season the fish really nicely so and no need for fat in the pan because the bacon will create the cooking liquid too having it wrapped in the plastic like that and letting it rest for about 10 minutes prevents the bacon from shrinking back away as much when you get it in the pan so it's a nice sort of fail-safe for you um while that's happening we have our blanched potatoes i'm just going to give them a little hit what was my measurement earlier a glug of olive oil there'll be more specific recipes that you'll be able to get to just give them a toss so they're all coated and then we're going to go directly onto the egg surface here this way they'll pick up a nice little bit of that char and smoke flavor as our fish is cooking and as we take the fish out to the direct contact we'll finish the potatoes back in the pan in some of that rendered bacon fat so we'll get good flavor going both ways all right so it's been about five minutes we've got the first render of our bacon out so we can go ahead and take our picks out now and then we're just gonna turn the fish over so we can start searing the other side and you can see the bacon really nicely crisped up stayed together really well from our nice wrap job and everything and you can also see potatoes are starting to pick up a little bit of char a little bit of that smoke flavor that's going to be really nice and sort of tie the whole dish together so now we're going to close it back let the other side render out and then we'll flip the potatoes into the pan with the bacon fat and pull the fish onto the direct heat to finish the dish all right so now the second side of our fish has had a chance to render out get the bacon nice and crispy so now we're going to do the position swap so we're going to take the potatoes all into all this rendered bacon fat so they can brown up in there and finish pick up a little bit of that flavor try not to drop any this time and then we're going to take the fish out and just finish it with some direct heat hopefully a little bit of that bacon will drip down onto the coals give you a little bit more smoke nicely flavored smoke just to finish the fish off with but you can see our wrap has stayed really nice and true the whole way through it's picking up a little bit of smoke so we'll just shut this let the fish fit it for about two minutes and then we'll be ready to slice and plate okay so you can see our little bit of bacon that's in direct contact now is giving a nice little bit of finishing smoke here so now we're ready to go i'll pull the cast iron off the grill first and we'll just get our potatoes back into the bowl we had them in with the oil first now we'll take the fish off onto a board where we can slice it beautiful so we're going to let our fish just rest there for a little bit while we slice it in the meantime we're going to build our quick little salad so we have just some really nice baby arugula gives you a little bit of pepperiness a little bit of freshness in the dish there a little pinch of salt touch of olive oil and then we're just going to do the juice and zest of a lemon again we don't want to add too much flavor into the salad really we just want a little bit of brightness in the dish we have enough flavor with the fish and the bacon we don't want to get that lost so like i said just adding a little bit of freshness to finish the dish with a little squeeze and the toss okay and now we can come in and slice our fish into little medallions now the first item we'll plate is our potatoes so they've got all that nice bacon fat on them so you don't want to overseas them just give them a little pinch of salt and a quick little toss and then you got to get your hands dirty here a little bit because the way we're going to plate them up so just do them in a nice row and then just take the heel of your hand and smash each one down just a little bit nestle them right in next to it then just finish with a touch of the salad and if you want you can just cut up the rest of the lemon that you didn't squeeze and people can squeeze that on their fish to finish the dish all right there you have it bacon wrapped icelandic cod with smoked potatoes and a little baby arugula salad you

Channel: BigGreenEggHQ

Views: 2,462

Keywords: Big Green Egg, Green EGG, Kamado, Charcoal

Id: LECW8aq5Uqw

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020