Learn how to cook moist, flaky trout in the oven. This incredible baked trout recipe is easy and works for rainbow trout but can easily be adapted for larger varieties like steelhead.
Baking whole trout in the oven is genius, especially when you do it in foil or parchment paper packets (called fish cooked en papillote or “paper”). With our easy recipe, your trout stays super moist and dinner will be on the table in about 20 minutes. This truly is one of my favorite trout recipes!
After sharing this easy baked trout recipe with friends, some were nervous about cooking the whole fish (with the skin, tail, and head still attached). So, if your on the same wavelength, I promise it’s easy and delicious!
Key Ingredients
- Trout: You can buy trout as whole fish that has been gutted and cleaned (like in our photos) or as fillets. For this recipe, we’re using whole trout. Look for cleaned and butterflied whole trout. By butterflied, I mean that the fish is slit down the middle but still has the halves attached. I’ve used rainbow trout in our photos, but this recipe works well for larger, saltwater varieties like arctic char, steelhead trout, and even salmon. Check my tips in the recipe for adjusting cooking time.
- Lemon and Fresh Herbs: Since we use butterflied trout, we can sneak a few aromatics into the middle to infuse the fish while it bakes. I love lemon slices and a handful of fresh herbs like parsley, cilantro, or dill. Thinly sliced garlic or onion are also lovely.
- Seasoning: I use olive oil, salt, and pepper to season my trout, but you can always use your favorite seafood seasonings instead. I’ve also made a Cajun spiced trout before and loved it. Try my Cajun seasoning if that sounds like something you’d enjoy.
Find the full recipe with measurements below.
How to Cook Whole Trout
Tip 1: Bake your fish in packets. We love baking our trout in packets. We used foil in the photos, but parchment paper is a also great option. Place your trout down onto the foil, lightly drizzle with oil, and season the fish inside and out with salt and pepper (note, you can use your favorite seafood seasoning instead).
Tip 2: Stuff your fish with lemon and herbs. We love stuffing the trout with lemon slices and fresh herbs. Sliced onions are tasty, too! Fold the sides of the packet to secure it and bake the trout in the oven until the flesh flakes easily with a fork.
Tip 3: Bake at the right temperature. The cooking time for your trout will vary depending on how large the fish is and the variety of fish you are baking. A small trout, like the one pictured in our photos, takes about 15 minutes in a 400°F oven. You can serve the fish as-is in the packets or remove them and remove the fillets from the bones.
How to Debone Trout
Watch our video to see me debone our baked trout. I’ve also shared my tips below for filleting cooked trout, which I find much easier than when the fish is raw. It’s a simple process. I use a spoon and butter knife to do it. Here are the basic steps I follow. I highly recommend watching the video:
- Pull away all the fins. Since the fish is cooked, they come away easily.
- Press the knife into the soft flesh just before the head and cut up to the bone. Repeat this with the soft flesh just before the tail.
- Use the knife to follow the line down the middle of the trout (this follows the spine). Just cut up to the bone.
- Following the line you just made down the spine, use a spoon to carefully pull/push the top and bottom fillet away from the bones.
- Pull the tail up and away the fish. By doing this the spine and bones will come away with it.
- Clean all the fillets of small bones and transfer to a plate for serving.
Serving Suggestions
I love serving this with a Caprese salad or a simple green salad tossed in my favorite balsamic vinaigrette or honey mustard dressing. It’s also excellent alongside red potato salad, corn salad, or creamy mashed potatoes.
For finishing touches, a drizzle of olive oil is lovely over the trout, or try it with homemade tartar sauce or our garlic aioli.
More Simple Fish Recipes
- Grilled Swordfish with Coriander and Lime
- Easy Seared Snapper
- Baked Fish with Scallions
- Lemon Dill Baked Salmon
Easy Oven Baked Trout
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
This is the best way to cook trout! I love baking whole trout in packets in the oven (see tips for doing this on the grill). The baked trout turns out succulent and flavorful. While your fish bakes, juices form at the bottom of the packet, which are delicious when spooned over the cooked trout. Other ingredients to consider adding to the middle of the fish are thinly sliced garlic, onion, or greens (like spinach). If you have larger varieties of fish like steelhead trout or even salmon, you can still use our method, but the bake time will be longer.
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
2 small rainbow trout, cleaned and butterflied (opened up with the halves still attached), about 1 pound
Olive oil
1 lemon, sliced
Fresh herbs, such as parsley, dill, tarragon, and thyme
Salt
Fresh ground black pepper
Directions
1Preheat the oven to 400°F (204°C). Cut two sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil larger than your fish, or use parchment paper.
2Place the trout, skin side down, on each piece of foil. Drizzle both sides with olive oil, then season both sides, inside and out, with salt and pepper.
3Place two parsley (or dill) sprigs and two lemon slices down the middle of each fish.
4Fold the foil by grabbing at the edges and crimping it together to make a packet.
5Place the packets of fish onto the baking sheet.
6Bake, checking one packet after 10 minutes. Depending on the size of your fish, it will take 15 to 25 minutes. When ready to come out of the oven, the flesh will be opaque and flake easily with a fork.
7Place each packet on a plate. Carefully open the foil packets, taking care not to let the steam burn you.
8Slide the fish away from the packet and onto the plate, pouring the juices over it. Serve with more fresh herbs and lemon slices.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Parchment paper: If you do not have heavy-duty foil, use two sheets of regular foil to make each packet.
- How to make grilled trout: Follow the directions in the recipe above to make each packet. Heat the grill to medium-high heat. Place the packets over indirect heat. Grill for 10 minutes, check one packet for doneness, and then continue to cook until it is cooked through.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
Excellent taste, however, it was very difficult getting the fish from the foil to the plate! Our beautiful fish fell apart!
Hi Rachel, This trout turns out so tender. You’re best bet is to slide it off the foil (or simply serve it on the foil).
I enjoy looking at your simple recipes, love sea food, lamb meat, and beef, as well as soups, thank you for sharing, even the oatmeal cake.
This was my first time cooking whole fish, heads and all, and wow, how straightforward and easy! I had to use doubled up plain alu foil, but it worked fine.
Exactly what I was looking for. My son’s friend just called and asked if I went some fresh caught trout. Your recipe is perfect! Love the easy clean-up and the video showing the deboning. Thanks!
Great method! Make sure you adjust baking time for the weight of the fish.
Very nice recipe for a great tasting fish. I used parchment paper after preparing the fish and rolled it up in the paper. I followed the tarter sauce recipe as well. Tasty with the fish flavor coming through the olive oil, salt, pepper and parsley.
Am going to try this tonight using small Artic Char , the size of small Rainbow Trout. I know by reading the recipe it will be delicious. Grew up catching brook Trout & I do love Trout, Artic Char & Salmon. Thanks for this simple way to cook Trout. I usually cook them in a skillet but not tonight!! 🙂
Did the grilled version of this, was delicious! (Lemon, parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper). Grilled for 10 min on one side and turned over for about 3 min on the other. Thanks for a great recipe; will be repeating for sure!
I didn’t have any fresh herbs so I used dill, tarragon, salt and pepper doused the insides with evoo, a couple slices of lemon, topped the fish with lemon pepper, made the foil packet and cooked at 400 for 15 minutes. My oven runs a little hot. I especially loved the video on how to bone the trout! I’ve never done it before. Hubs usually does it. I missed a few bones but I’ll do better next time. Thanks for a great tutorial!
This was a great recipe. I made it with a little trout my daughter and caught today. The only thing i added was fresh basil and smoked paparika. Thank you!
Love the additions! 🙂
This was so easy and delicious! Makes so much sense to clean it after cooked.
My fresh fish turned out perfectly! The cooking toime was perfect.
Great snd easy recipe! Soo yummy.Thank you
I’m so happy you enjoyed it, Sharon. Thank you for coming back.
If only all YouTube channel owners would present material as clearly and simply as this one, what a bonus that would be! My trout took quite a bit longer to bake in the oven than the suggested 10 to 20 minutes but that’s OK. Everything else was straightforward and easy!
The trout is AMAZING i have been reccomended this for so long and i finnaly tried it and it was the best fish i have ever had i extremely reccomend this recipie if you are going to cook rainbow trout!
Use this everytime
Got some fresh trout from a friend. Chose this recipe. 15 minutes wasn’t quite enough.Tastes great!
Hi Diane, So happy you enjoyed the recipe. I’ve added additional tips for cooking time in the recipe since other readers have said the same thing. Thank you for coming back!
I caught my first fish and am now using this delicious recipe. Thank you!
Congratulations! So glad you enjoy the recipe 🙂
BAKING IT TONIGHT.
This was so simple and delicious. It came out very tender. Couldn’t be easier. I did have to flip mine but that’s because it was in a toaster oven. It also took closer to 20 minutes for me fyi.
So glad you enjoyed the recipe 🙂
Great recipe and video! Right to the point! Delicious and excellent fillet instructions.
Yay! So glad you enjoyed the recipe and video 🙂
This recipe was wonderful! My first time cooking trout and it won’t be my last!!
Wonderful! 🙂
This was wonderful and so much easier to debone than when the trout is raw. I have made this twice and it is now my go to recipe, thankfully I have a wonderful neighbor that brings me fresh caught trout!
Thank you so much for coming back to let us know that you enjoyed the recipe 🙂
Excellence – Thank You.
I just came across your video and it’s the only one I could find that described exactly what my fish looked like before cooking process. The other videos made me butcher and loose a LOT of meat. Now I’m left with half the meat of my trout. The next one I will be following these directions. Thank you!
So happy that you found us and glad we could help 🙂
Great! The recipe and cooking time were perfect for our fresh Rainbow Trout. The filleting demonstration was helpful. From now on, we will always filet our trout using your method.
I am thankful to have found you. My trout is in the oven. You made it easy to prepare and I look forward to tasting it.
Just did three trout the way your video says and it was perfect. 15 minutes phones came out like you showed exactly. Put lemon onion salt pepper and some red onion with a little bit of granulated garlic. This recipe is a keeper. Thank you
Loved this recipe, so simple, I had to cook a little longer, and have to work on the deboning but it was delicious and the trout tasted great. I like the natural taste and not using too many spices worked for me. Thanks.
Made it, came out great! My fish were still a bit frozen when I put them in the oven, so it was a bit longer than 20 minutes. But it was easy enough to check on them. Loved how easy it was to remove most of the bones!
Put lemon on at the end . A good piece of trout doesn’t need much. A dry white wine,a small amount of good olive oil A pat of butter some herbes de Provence and some coarse salt and ofcourse a squirt of lemon at the end . You can also put some lemon zest on it as well.
Just made this trout recipe tonight. At 77 I have made many..many fish recipes. This was by far the easiest and tastiest. Bonus…no messy clean up. I added thinly sliced shallots inside the rainbow trout in addition to the parsley and lemon. It was a large freshly caught fish. After 20 minutes I checked it for doneness…the aroma was unbelievable. My son..the fisherman..ate the entire fish! This will be my go to method for fish from now on. Thank you
Hi Bonnie, We are thrilled that you enjoyed the recipe so much. Thank you for coming back and sharing.
We made 3 good sized trout this way tonight. I stuffed the inside with lemon slices, a pat of butter, parsley, herbs de Provence, onion powder and garlic powder. It was done in 25 minutes. I will use this method again. Delicious!
Took the fish out after 20mins, fish was still a little raw. Cook for 30 mins total to have delicious flaky fish
Caught 3 large rainbows over the past 4 days and will fill you in on success after I’ve prepared and cooked according to your recipe
Caught 4 rainbows early this morning. Going to fix two tonight with your receipe.