I finished work early today so picked up some sea bass from the supermarket to smoke for our tea!
I cut open and gutted the sea bass, inserted some sprigs of dill and then placed lemon slices on top along with some salt and pepper. Then I made some small parcels out of baking paper and prepared some vegetables which were placed inside a long with some garlic and dill:
- 1 Fennel
- 2 Peppers
- 3 Celery sticks
- 4 Asparagus
I set my Weber kettle up for smoking at 250°F using the diffuser plate and then placed both sea bass on the grill (along with some sausages for starters!) for around 45mins. The diffuser plate was then removed and I grilled half an onion and half a lemon in direct heat until soft – the onion was chopped up and added to the vegetable parcels and the lemon was squeezed over the top.
The parcels were then cooked indirectly for around 15mins, removed from the grill and everything was plated up.
The dish was nice but definitely room for improvement on my part! I don’t think I started the smoke with enough hot coals so it was a good hour or so before the kettle even reached 250°F! Next time I will also cook the parcels earlier as 15mins was not long enough at 400°F and they were undercooked. The sea bass was nice but probably a little overcooked – next time I will smoke them for longer, probably at around 200°F
