Charcoal Grilled Whole Tilapia Recipe
A typical Ghanaian way of making tilapia is by marinating the entire fish in a delicious peppery marinade and then grilling over charcoal for that fantastic smokey taste.
Servings: 3
Equipment
- 3 fish grill baskets
Ingredients
- 3 medium- sized tilapia descaled and entrails removed
Marinade
- lemon or lime to wash the fish
- 5 small onions
- sea salt to taste
- 5 cloves garlic
- 5 tablespoons vegetable oil approximately
- 5 ginger cubes (see note 5)
- 10 scotch bonnets or according to taste
Instructions
- Clean the tilapia with some water mixed with lemon or lime juice. See note 1.
- Score all the tilapia, twice on each side.
- Blend all the ingredients for the marinade.
- Spread the marinade all over the fish making sure to get some of the marniade into the stomach area, the bit around the head and the scores.
- Leave to marinate for at least 2 hours but ideally overnight in the fridge.
- Using a brush or a small piece of paper towel, brush the fish grill baskets with some oil. Brush the grill with some oil as well.
- Place the fish into the grill baskets and secure them so that they don't fall out. See note 2.
- Leave to come to room temperature and then grill over a moderately hot grill.
- Grill the tilapia over the charcoal making sure to turn regularly so that the fish cooks evenly. The fish is ready once it flakes off easily and is no longer opaque. See note 3.
- Leave the fish to cool before taking them out of the fish baskets. See note 4.
- Serve with banku, rice, akple, attieke, fried yam, or kenkey and shito or fresh ground pepper.
Notes
- Instead of rubbing lime or lemon directly on the fish, squeeze two limes or one lemon into about 1 liter of water and clean the fish with it.
- Depending on the size of your fish they may or may not completely fit. As long as you are able to secure them with the latch at the bottom they should not fall out.
- Depending on the temperature of your grill and the size of the fish, cooking times will vary. These tilapia were cooked within 30-40 minutes.
- Trying to force the fish out of the grill baskets before it has cooled may lead to the fish coming apart.
- Ginger cubes are simply blended ginger stems which are filled into ice cube trays and then frozen for later use. A full recipe can be found here.