I've had poor man's shrimp. Bluegill fillets boiled in shrimp boil and served with cocktail sauce.

We will poach walleye on occasion. My will make a poor mans lobster. Fairly simple process then dip in garlic butter, Every time she makes it I say why don't we fix it this way all the time. Here is the recipe.
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
1/4 stick butter
1 lemon
In a 2 quart pot bring to a rolling boil add ingredients
cut walleye in 2" x 2" chunks
Bill until the chunks float to the top and dip them out carefully
with a strainer.
Sprinkle with paprika and dip in melted garlic butter.

Poor Man's Shrimp with yellow perch. Add Old Bay to the boil water, dunk perch fillets in the water for about 2 minutes, put fillets in ice water for a few minutes... drain, dry, and chill in the fridge. Have with cocktail sauce loaded with horseradish. They disappear fast

My wife does almost the same thing except once the fish chunks are floating they get put into ice cold water, with some ice cubes added to flash cool them off. Drain real well then add in some cocktail sauce to lightly cover. We take some big bowls to get to gathers and there's never any left over.

a very quick and tasty way to do a fish fillet , sauté pan with a lid about a half a cup of white wine

salt and pepper the fillet

med-low heat just enough to keep that wine simmering with the lid on , it takes 5-10 minutes depending on the size of the fillet.
you just want to get your internal temp to 145-150 then plate the fish and turn the heat up and reduce the wine and it makes a glaze to put over your fish.
you can toss in a little finely sliced onion or green onion as well if you like

Burbot boiled in sprite is popular.
Ive had pike cubed up and boiled in sprite and then dipped in butter...it was wonderful.
Cornmeal is ok, but a mixture of Drakes, rice flour, baking soda produces a far lighter and crispier batter for my likings...

Door County Fish boils are popular. Fresh caught white fish from the Bay.

I've thrown fish in with seafood boils but never intentionally done a "fish boil".

I'll try just about anything twice, but if we're cooking something a certain way to let the grease or scum come out, I'll just have a sandwich and catch something that doesn't require that.

I used to work with a single mother who would chunk up filets and boil them in crab boil. She brought me some to eat cold and they werent bad. Said she could be eating fish in about five minutes and didnt have to mess with the grease.

About fifty years ago, right after I got married, we were poor as dirt. Besides my $3,25 an hour job as a bio tech for the feds, I was running trot-lines and selling catfish. We were like Bubba in Forest Gump with his shrimp - except it was catfish. When we boiled some catfish to make stew - it finished us off. My wife likes fish and she still wont eat catfish to this day.

We did eat some fish soup from boiled fish in Panama that was great.

I helped clean several hundred pounds of snowy grouper and we boiled the fish frames for stock. It was so rich, actually too rich to enjoy. We had to cut it with water to make our fish stock.

On the NC outer banks, boiling fish is very common among locals. The set their lightly boiled fish aside while cooking cubed pieces of salt pork. Potatoes and onion are also boiled. The fish is plated on top of the onion and potato, then the crispy fried pork fat is placed on top and some pork grease is pored over everything. It is pretty good.

I don't really consider making stock with heads and bones to be boiling fish as you really ain't eating nothing but the flavor but I have made my own fish stock for gumbos.

I'm going to give that one a try. It looks really good.

Not really a Minnesota thing. You can get away with robbing the government of millions of dollars, but admitting to boiling fish might get you deported.

they like to soak theirs in lye on that side of the river.

I started working fish boil pots about 8 years old with my grandpa , serve around 450-500 people running boils all afternoon. for a church fund raiser.
my great uncle would meet him half way with the coolers of fish that morning coming down from Door county.

we ran 5 pots 4 boil and one to make recovery water. they had a 3 quart sauce pan bolted to broom handle so that you could dip and carry the boiling water down the line of pots and refill the pot that had just boiled and had the baskets removed.
I liked fire so I was good keeping all those pots stocked with wood.
kept the pots full of new hot water so that when a line started to form we could boil.
after a little while they let me do all the over boils as well , had a pint mason jar with a handle that was filled a bit over half way with #2 walk past quickly and toss the fuel not the jar and keep moving

fist time I ever bought fuel by myself they sent me over to the gas station to buy 50 cents worth of #2 diesel it was about a half mile walk from the fair grounds shed where we served the fish boil , I had the 50 cents and the fuel can.
I was so nervous I was going to get 51 cents worth and all I had was 50. I was probably about 10. I landed it right on 50 click click click click click till I hit 50
that was a little easier to do when it was only a dollar a gallon or a little under
I had plenty of experience with a pump I filled my moms car all the time but she always wanted if full and I never had to pay.

I was a big onion fan myself , the number of people who didn't want their onions was crazy the ladies would put the extra onions that didn't go in a ice cream pail and I could eat as many as I wanted while tending pots.

good times almost all the old guys running the fish boil were WWII vets including my grandpa.

tend fires , eat onions and after they were done serving eat all the pie I could that was left over.

fish chowder is what you make with the fish that is left over from the fish boil.

Boil all of it in frying oil

We have done the ice bath also. Can't go wrong it is so good. I just past this recipe on to a client who fished with me Sunday. I hope she tries it.

Thanks everyone. I'll have to try boiling some fish.

Greencountypete, thanks for all the information. I really like your cauldrons made from the washing machines.

Dan Barnhurst, thanks for the recipe. Your chowder looks very good.

Tatiana, I like the look of your soup too.

J. Staton, I'm going to try the boiled bluegill fillets dipped in cocktail sauce, cooked with Capt. Scott's method. Bluegill are the most abundant, easy to catch fish near here.

Keith

that is my cousins set up he inherited from my great uncle his dad

I inquired once I was an adult about what happened to the 5 pots I tended as a kid that my grandpa had made for the church.
never could get an answer I wanted to buy one. since they hadn't used them in years.
I use a 30 liter tamale steamer pot on a LP burner myself it works it looks like a mid sized aluminum garbage can

before my great uncle Bill left the shipyard he made those LP burners in the picture under the pot

if you can cook with LP it opens up where you can cook to anyplace with a patch of gravel or dirt . LP also made a lot less soot on everything so clean up and transport was easier

we found skimming foam with a sieve in a wood handle while the fish was cooking and dunking the baskets up and down a few times cleared as much oil as the overboil did

I do the same on a smaller scale using a spider to lift the fish , potatoes and onions from the pot

my great uncle would take his fish boil setup on the road to whatever family member wanted to host the fish boil , a big cooler , the pot , 2 LP tanks and the burner and a tin folding table to serve on all fit fine in his truck he usually had a smaller truck ran a 1982 C10 for a lot of years put 2 bodies on it.