Fishing for foolproof way to cook seafood? Try foil packs

Hoarding takes many forms; my vice is aluminum foil. At any given moment, my garage is loaded with at least a dozen rolls of foil and an assortment of disposable foil pans. No trip to the grocery store is complete without at least one new roll out of fear of running out.

Crumbled up into a ball, you can clean your grill grates with foil. It’s perfect for wrapping up leftovers or as a cover to any dish you want to keep warm. Meats such as brisket and ribs wrapped in foil will cook faster and retain more juices.

And foil packets are the perfect vehicle for cooking seafood — something you should be doing regularly.

Seafood can be intimidating. Fillets can stick to the grill grates, shrimp can quickly get overcooked, and not many of us in South Texas have a lot of practice cooking clams and mussels. All these issues can be resolved by cooking them in foil packs, which provide a comforting blanket of seafood security.

The formula is simple: Spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray, pick your seafood, add your vegetables, season it up, add a little moisture with some broth or other sauce, wrap it up, and get cooking. The only caveat is to make sure you use heavy duty foil, which is marked clearly on the packaging, rather than standard foil. It has about triple the thickness, retains heat better and is more resistant to tears.

Seafood foil packs are incredibly versatile. You can load them up in large batches so a single packet can feed multiple people,

Chuck Blount / Staff Seafood foil packets, whether cooked on the grill or in the oven, are ready in about 15 minutes.