Whitefish Candy

When I was a kid, I learned that whitefish were something to prize. We would even ask our camping neighbors at Eagle Lake to keep their whitefish catches for us. We almost always went home with an ice chest full of whitefish, and another full of Eagle Lake trout.

My mom had a simple way of turning mountain whitefish into something special. She would lay strips of fresh, lightly salted whitefish on a cookie sheet and smother them with brown sugar. The pan went into the oven to bake low and slow until the sugar melted and caramelized.

The strips came out sweet with a hint of salt, slightly chewy, and hard to stop eating. We called it whitefish candy.

And when my dad had the old smoker going, there was smoked whitefish too.

Those were the days.