How to Grill Fish and Save Your Unibrow

I learned how to grill fish only after I burnt my eyebrow off.

That's right, eyebrow.

On the downside, I no longer have one long, glorious unibrow running ear to ear. Man, I miss that thing. You weed out a lot of undesirable women with a unibrow, let me tell you!

There are two benefits, though: 1) I no longer need to spend 15 minutes every morning combing, fluffing and mousing my unibrow; and 2) I learned how to draw on a somewhat realistic-looking brow (and put out face fires) really well.

If that was all I'd learned, though, losing my beloved ear-to-ear strip carpeting would have broken my spirit and made me less of a man. Luckily, the experience also taught me how to grill fish pretty well.

The first lesson I learned from the ambulance personnel who worked on my burns is this: if you must smear yourself with flammable after shave, then - and this is important - keep your face more than three inches away from the gas burners when you fire the thing up.

You know, they should really put warning signs on those things! They probably will after I'm done suing them.

The second thing I learned about grilling fish is choosing the right kind of fish. I suggest the dead kind. Live ones don't take kindly to being put three inches away from gas burners. Sometimes they flip themselves off the grill and slap the grill master in the face with their slimy tails. Don't ask me how I know this - I just know, okay?

Surprisingly, the kind of dead fish also makes a difference. Fish with firm meat makes for the best grilling. Really oily fish tends to catch fire to itself - and magnificent unibrows, too...if your face is three inches or less from the gas burners when you fire the grill up. Fish like salmon, tuna, shark, swordfish and red snapper tend to hold up well on the grill. Your eyebrow will not.

While you can also grill flaky fish, some precaution is needed. First, wash the flammable after shave completely off your face. Then consider purchasing an inexpensive grilling cage. You can find them two isles down from the burn salve in your local grocery store. Doing so will keep the fish - and your unibrow - where it should be.

In either case - and I can't stress this enough - keep your face more than three inches away from the gas burner. Oh - and try to flip the fish only once after 5-7 minutes (if the top is closed and you're using a low flame). Any more than that and you risk having it fall apart. Any less than three inches and you'll have to draw your unibrow back on like me. And trust me - when you draw it on yourself, your expression will always be that of surprise.

Now, those instructions work well for grilling fish steaks. But what if you have fillets? The grilling cage will save your fish from falling through the grates. But if some pieces do fall through - and this is advice I got from the doctors in my burn unit - turn the grill off before cleaning them out. Oh - and depending on the thickness of the fillets, 3-5 minutes per side over a low flame will do.

Grilling whole fish is far more forgiving than either fish steaks or fillets - again, as long as you chose the dead kind of fish. To ensure the fish actually is as dead as possible, remove its innards. The skin, scales and bone will hold the flesh together for you. And, if the flames leap up and decimate your beloved hairy ridge rover, then the fish skin will protect the meat while your family rolls you on the ground and covers you with a blanket to smother the angry, angry fire. While cooking time for whole fish varies by size, I've found that when the skin is semi-crispy looking, then you should strongly consider applying the burn salve to yourself. And when the fish skin is kind of crispy looking, then your fish is done.

To review: keep your face more than three inches away from the gas burner when you start the grill up.