Welcome to our new BoatU.S. Magazine series on how boaters from different regions prepare their favorite local foods, starting with a focus on Great Lakes fish, farms, and forests.
Edited by Lynda Morris Childress
Photo, Getty Images
Photo, Getty Images
If you’ve never sampled Great Lakes regional cuisine, better get your grub on. The region is an ever-changing melting pot – today’s cuisine influenced by its vibrant, multicultural population, while cooking styles from early Indigenous and European inhabitants remain.
Areas of the Great Lakes – known as “the Fresh Coast” – boast more freshwater coastline than many salt-coast regions. Lake fish are a cornerstone of the local diet, especially for anglers. Plentiful whitefish, walleye, perch, and salmon are among the most common, often prepared using traditional methods like fish boils and chowders, or fried, smoked, or grilled to highlight their mild, flaky texture.
Stacey Brugeman enjoys a relaxing day out on the water in Michigan. Photo, Melissa LeMieux
Seasonal farm- or lake-to-table foods abound, as do techniques for “putting food by” and smoking fish or game to preserve it for use during long winters. Foraged seasonal foods from the area’s vast forests complement it all. Produce, both cultivated and wild, proliferates, such as Michigan’s world-famous cherries, or, in springtime, wild leeks foraged from the forest floor.
This month, we invited Great Lakes cook, food writer, and boater Stacey Brugeman, a Michigan native, to share some of her own recipes from the region. Stacey, her husband, Dan, and their twin sons and daughter live in Leelanau County. The area is surrounded on three sides by Lake Michigan and dotted with smaller lakes and streams. They own and enjoy a 1967 Sea Ray 17 runabout and a Buzzards Bay 14.
Stacey’s food and travel writing has appeared in Saveur, Food & Wine, The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, and others. Locally, she writes about food for Michigan’s Traverse magazine and is at work on a book that will include recipes to be published in 2028. — L.M.C.
Have you ever caught too many fish? Next time you go fishing, set aside what you can eat fresh, then freeze 1-pound batches of the rest. (Make sure your catch goes into the freezer the day it’s caught, not days later because you haven’t eaten it yet.) Chowder is one of the most unsung ways to cook frozen fish. Filets of lake trout, whitefish, salmon, or walleye can go straight from freezer to pot and poach while cooking. Once the fish is cooked until it just begins to flake apart, it’s ready. Freezing your fresh catch will be far easier when you know you can make this gorgeous chowder all year long!
| 4 thick-cut slices bacon, diced | 5 stems fresh flat-leaf parsley | 1 cup frozen or canned vacuum-packed sweet corn (vac-packed canned corn has no liquid) |
| 1 yellow onion, diced | 1 bay leaf | 3 cups whole milk |
| 1 celery stalk, washed, trimmed, and diced | 32 ounces vegetable broth | 1 pound skinned, deboned Great Lakes fish (any combination of perch, lake trout, salmon, walleye) |
| 5 sprigs fresh thyme | 2 large russet potatoes, peeled and diced | Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste |
Lake fish chowder in a thermos would make a great onboard lunch on chilly fishing days. Photo, Lynda Morris Childress
Set a heavy-bottomed pot over medium to medium-high heat and saute diced bacon, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown but not yet crispy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add diced onion and celery. Stir to combine. Cook until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes more. While vegetables cook, tie the thyme, parsley, and bay leaf together with cooking twine to create a bouquet garni. Set aside.
Once onions are translucent, add 1⁄2 cup broth to the pan, scraping up any brown bits on the bottom. Reduce heat to medium. Add remaining 31⁄2 cups broth, diced potatoes, corn, and the bouquet garni. Bring to a simmer, skim any fat off the surface, and reduce heat to low. Add milk and cook at a low simmer, partially covered, until the potatoes begin to soften, about 10 to 15 minutes. Do not boil.
Add frozen fish to the pot, cover, and poach at a low simmer until fish just begins to flake apart with a fork, another 10 to 15 minutes. Remove the bouquet garni from the pot. With a fork, break fish apart into bite-size pieces. Add salt and pepper to taste, stir, and serve hot.
— STACEY BRUGEMAN
Each spring, wild leeks, known as ramps, emerge from the forest floor throughout the Great Lakes region. Wise cooks put them by while they’re in season, then serve them all summer long. For a particularly Fresh Coast take, make ramp pesto with black walnuts native to the Midwest. Ramp pesto can be served with pasta, used as a dip for crudités, smeared across a plate beneath smoky potatoes, and more. It’s so good that my sons – avid anglers – sometimes steal a jar out of the pantry before pushing off in their aluminum fishing boat with a sack lunch.
Ramps are easily foraged in the spring and make a very special pesto. Photo, Shutterstock
| 8 ounces washed ramps, cut from soil with a knife (leave roots in soil) | 1⁄2 cup black walnuts, chopped | 1⁄2 cup shredded Parmigiano Reggiano |
| Juice from half a lemon (about 2 tbsp.) | 1 cup olive oil | Freshly ground black pepper, to taste |
| 3⁄4 tsp. salt |
Roughly chop the ramp bulb, stem, and leaves. Set aside. Warm a dry, cast-iron skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot but not yet smoking, add the black walnuts. Shake the pan from time to time, toasting the walnuts until golden brown and fragrant, about 2 minutes. Set aside.
Working in batches, add chopped ramps and olive oil to a food processor, pulsing until just combined. Once the ramps and olive oil are incorporated, add walnuts, cheese, lemon juice, and salt. Whiz the mixture for 1 minute, until it’s a creamy, spreadable consistency that hovers between a schmear and a drizzle. Season with a few grindings of fresh cracked black pepper to taste and place into sterilized glass jars to put by. — S.B.
Years ago, while living on the salty East Coast, I flew home to Michigan for a wedding. “Have a perch sandwich for me,” my now-husband said. Dan grew up sailing Lake Erie’s Bass Islands, home to Put-In-Bay, and had fond memories of the area’s specialty: fried perch fillets, piled high with lettuce, tomato, and creamy tartar sauce on a soft roll. To this day, we both love a good fish sandwich, but wonder: Why is perch always deep-fried? The answer: It doesn’t have to be, especially if there are capers and brown butter involved.
| 1 pound perch, scaled, cleaned, and butterflied into double-sided skin-on fillets (about 8 perch) | Freshly ground black pepper | 2 tbsp. sherry vinegar |
| 1⁄4 cup flour | 2 tbsp. neutral cooking oil (such as sunflower, corn, canola, and others) | 2 tbsp. drained capers, gently smashed (use a mortar and pestle or the flat side of a chef’s knife) |
| 1⁄4 tsp. salt | 6 tbsp. butter |
Shallow-fried perch are a delicious alternative to deep-fried fillets. Photo, David Weidner
Warm oven to 200 F and place an empty heat-tolerant platter in it.
Lay fillets on a cutting board, skin side up. Working parallel to the outer edges of the fish body, use a sharp knife to score two slits into skin on both sides of each butterflied fillet.
Measure flour, salt, and a few grinds of pepper onto a plate. Combine with a fork. Dredge both sides of each fillet, pressing fish into the flour with your fingers. Gently shake off any excess. Set aside on a clean plate.
Set a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp. of the oil. When it runs across the pan quickly when tilted, drop a pinch of flour into the oil. If it sizzles, it’s ready. Working in batches, add a few perch fillets, skin side down, without crowding the pan. Cook for about 2 minutes. Occasionally press fillets down with a flexible, sharp-edged spatula or fish spatula so the skin turns golden brown. Flip fillets and cook for 1 minute more. Place cooked perch, skin side up so it remains crispy, on the warm platter in your oven. Add a bit more oil to the pan, check to be sure the oil is hot but not smoking, and repeat until all fish are golden brown and on the warm platter.
Remove pan from heat. Wipe out the oil with a paper towel. Working over low heat (the pan is still plenty hot), melt the butter. Stir constantly, gently cooking until foam subsides and butter begins to turn nutty brown (about 8 to 10 minutes). Whisk in vinegar until fully combined. Add the smashed capers.
Remove perch from oven. Place fish skin side up on individual plates, spooning a generous pool of brown butter/caper sauce over each portion. — S.B.
Here in the Grand Traverse region, we get really opinionated about who makes the best cherry pie. Nobody talks about the delicious cherry dessert our neighbors across the Atlantic prefer: Cherry clafoutis. Instead of ladling thickened sour cherries into a pie crust, French cooks love to bake this custardy, crêpe-like cake studded with sweet cherries. So skip the debate. Treat your dock neighbors to the French equivalent instead. Pro tip: Clafoutis is excellent for breakfast or dessert!
Cherry clafoutis travels well for a delicious onboard dessert or potluck raft-up. Photo, Getty Images/Yumehana
| 3 cups sweet cherries, washed, stems removed | 3 large eggs | 2 tsp. vanilla extract |
| 1 1⁄4 cups whole milk | 1⁄3 cup granulated cane sugar | 3⁄4 cup all-purpose flour |
| Knob of butter (about 2 tbsp.) | 2 tbsp. kirsch or cherry brandy | Confectioners’ sugar for dusting |
Pit the cherries. Working over two food-storage containers, place pits in one container, fruit in the other. Pour milk into the pit container to soak. Cover both containers and refrigerate overnight. The next day, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place a knob of butter in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet or baking dish. Use a paper towel to rub it around the bottom and sides of the pan to coat. Add cherries to the pan and shake until they form a single layer.
Crack eggs into a blender. Whiz at high speed until frothy on top, about 30 seconds. Working over a strainer, pour the milk from your pit container into the blender, separating and discarding the pits. Add sugar, salt, brandy, vanilla. Pulse a few times to combine. While the blender is running at medium speed, gradually add flour and blend until the mixture resembles frothy cream. Pour batter over the cherries. Place on the center rack of the oven. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes.
Remove from oven. Let sit until edges pull back from the sides of the pan, about 15 minutes. While clafoutis is warm, dust with confectioners’ sugar, cut into wedges, and serve. — S.B.
Published: June 2026
BoatUS Contributing Editor
Contributing editor Lynda Morris Childress is spearheading our BoatU.S. Magazine
food series. An experienced charter cook, she’s been a hands-on boat owner, editor, and
food columnist for 35 years. Now, with her husband, Captain Kostas Ghiokas, she crews
and cooks for guests on their Atlantic 70, Stressbuster, on owner-operated charters in
the Greek Islands.