Gordon: I was a salmon poacher ..and I don’t mean cooking it in hot water
SWEARY TV superchef Gordon Ramsay has confessed he used to POACH salmon as a kid on illicit fishing trips with his dad.
Ramsay, 52, admitted: “I’m not going to lie, growing up fishing for salmon in Scotland, my father couldn’t afford fishing rights.
“So we were poaching – we were stealing salmon. It was like playing hide and seek in the woods.
“When the line went crazy, we came out, unhooked the fish, ran home, gutted it and ate salmon for the next three or four days.”
The Michelin- starred chef – known for his rants on TV’s Hell’s Kitchen – added: “There’s something adventurous about spending time in the wild depending on what you get from the river, whether it’s grayling, a beautiful trout or a salmon.
“I grew up with that kind of love and respect for the outside and nature. From a chef ’s point of view, it’s the only time you get to yourself because you’re completely cut off.” The dad of five – whose wife Tanya, 45, gave birth to a son Oscar in April – says he encourages his kids to shun iPads for the great outdoors.
“Get them outside, get them comfortable with the seasons, and they get that energy going off the beaten track,” he said.
The chef went to remote places in Vietnam, Peru, Laos, New Zealand and Alaska to find and cook pure food for new show Uncharted on National Geographic – and claims it even helped him swear less...
“I don’t go out of my way to curse. Unfortunately it’s to do with the muppets I have to work with.
“On Uncharted I was surrounded by incredible professionals.”