How to Cook Barramundi...????...and enjoy it...?????

Fred, is the barra wild caught salt water? Barra that has lived in fresh water, be it stocked dams or upper reaches of rivers tastes like mud.

We live in the NT in a prime fishing area. Although we rate barra about fourth down the list as a table fish (Threadfin, Fingermark (Golden Snapper) and Mangrove Jack are all better in my opinion), Barra is still a great eating fish.

My best 'easy way':
Using fresh salt water barra, if fillets are thick (ie from a fish longer than around 60cm), slice fillets down the middle, so each piece is not more that 15mm thick. My wife likes it even thinner at 10cm or less.
Roll in seasoned flour (with salt and pepper)
Beat an egg or two and coat the floured fish with that
Shallow fry in a pan in good clean oil, not too hot.Cook till a light yellow / light brown.

Serve with chips and salad. Tastes great just like that. If it does not and the fish was frozen, I'd suspect how fresh it was before freezing.

Some added ideas for variety:
If you have some ripe mango, slice thin and lay over the fish. Mango is great with fish. I freeze mango flesh when season so we have a supply out of season.

Or, if you grow your own tomatoes, some cooked tomatoes with onion and a bit of garlic go great as well. I freeze cooked tomatoes and onions when in season as well.

Living where we do, we eat fresh fish about three times a week. Over 50% of the fish we consume is barra and we love it. But most times, we are eating fish caught that day.

Hope you can get to enjoy some barra. If not, head north some time and try in fresh.

Norm C

G`day Fred,
I am pretty sure that the Barra from Woollies is imported farmed stuff from Asia somewhere.
I will be interested in the replies you get.
As far as eating goes I know that salt-water caught Barra is heaps better than fresh-water caught. Running fresh water caught is much better than stagnant billabong caught.
Where farmed or imported Barra fits into all this I don`t know.
What I do know is that I would just as soon have Redfin, Yellow Belly or Murray Cod to eat, but catching them is a different matter.

Happy NY,

Scrubby.

G/Day Fred, Maybe Those Boofheads doing the xxxx add might be on to something?......LOL...Wheel Barrow Flavour.


I'm with you with the flat head, .....nothing like it!!!.


Happy New Year

Cheers Axlre

well finally ..... i went down to Bremer Bay last June and we caught a salmon (been a few years) and we cooked it up fresh and we all loved it, i love catching and eating Salmon ..... yes Barra are over rated but only because they can be hard to get, i have seen some "locals" at Maningrida keep the big salt water catties over jewies and barra, did not believe it so i tried it and was stunned at how well a SALT water cattie tastes, yep better than a Barra.....
As for cooking them, always fresh and only use BUTTER not oil or marg and a little bit of garlic in it and nuthin else ...
Enjoy....

"to make them palatable"


Fresh


Cheers

Fresh wild saltwater barra.

Mmmmmmmmmmm, nothing compares mate.

You see the stuff you buy in shops is farmed barra from overseas. The only barra worth eating is barra from around Wyndham WA. No joke, the best restaurants in Oz would only buy barra caught from here for a long time once.

See barra are very tricky. They can live in fresh and salt and move from one to the other very quickly. The taste can also change quickly, but so do the characteristics of the fish, depending on the water and environment they have been living in.

The best tasting barra, is between 60cm and 80cm, which is a male fish, and will have a nice "BUMP" on its head and a yellow tail and fins. Which indicates its a very strong, healthy saltwater fish. Anything over this size and they lose taste, and actualy start to get chewy and bland.

They are best served in light batter, on the BBQ or cooked in alfoil on the coals with some tomato,lemon and onion stuffed inside.

Step 1 : Go to the nearest top end river with fishing gear.

Step 2 : Catch said fish between 55 cm to 85 cm.

Step 3 : Bleed said fish.

Step 4 : while fish is bleeding, prepare bed of coals.

Step 5 : Place fish whole ( scales guts the lot) on the coals and cover with a layer of coals, leaving the head out.

Step 6 : when the eyes go white, remove fish peal back skin and feast.

That's proper way, any other way is a waste of a good fish.

Most restaurant barra is farmed , some from the farm up Wonga Beach way , most from Thailand and Vietnam , bassarra close to barra often flogged as barra , best is wild caught salt water , filleted into 200/250grm fillets , poached in a light white wine such as a fresh sauvignon blanc with a sqeeze of lemon ,steamed baby spuds and sour cream plus a fresh green salad,,, yum.

I'm with Norm, Fred. Simple batter (try a beer batter and 'test' a few tinnies first, might make the barra more palatable for you), lightly fried, bit of lemon, some chips and salad.

Worked around the Gulf country years ago and BBQed freshly caught barra from the brilliant (fresh-water) Gregory River tasted great. A few snap-frozen fillets we brought back tasted just as good 3 months later! Mt Isa fish 'n chip shops used to have deep-fried barra for not $much back then. Always tasted great.

Have had barra in restaurants down south a few times, but no more. Little taste - wild and fresh is obviously the key (as it is with many fish obviously). Nevertheless, a nice sweet flattie is near the top of my 'fishlist' also.

Nile Perch is the fish that is passed off as Barra, it is almost an identical fish.

In the NT it is illegal to pass Nile Perch off as Barra, it comes with a $10,000 fine if caught.

Was talking to a friend a couple of days ago who was up at Awoonga Dam at Gladstone when the water was about 30cm over the spillway and he said he was counting about 4-5 big Barra going over every minute............and that's just the ones he saw.

Hopefully they will spawn when they reach the salt water and will provide some good fishing in the coming years.

Bruce