Cooking FW trout:

[Lard Almighty]

Stocked trout are soft and have a slight liver taste to them. Once they've been in the river/lake for a few months they get much firmer and sweeter. Provided it's a clean body of water; otherwise they taste like mud.

I will cook the stockies in butter and white wine, then flake the meat off and make fish cakes out of them. I just repurposed a crab cake recipe and go heavy on the old bay.

[Gerry Zagorski]

I brined and smoked it with Alder and is was pretty tasty. Alder is best since it won't power the fish...

[frugalfisherman]

I don't trout fish but my neighbor gave me 24 rainbows that he and his buddies caught near Lambertville. My job is to smoke them. Almost all were small maybe 6-8 inches heads off. Brined for 2 days and smoked with oak. Once smoked the center bone peals right off meat. Tastes great. There was 0ne big trout about 18 inches head off (guess he was stocked a few years ago) so I made slits on sides and stuffed with lots of parsley and lemon to bake. It seems very similar to salmon. A bit oily.

[Dclark2]

Best Trout I ever tasted was headed, dipped in flour and fried in bacon grease at stream side.