Simple seafood picnic ideas for seaside outings

Why seafood belongs at the seaside

There is something quietly right about eating fish within sight of the water it came from. The salt air sharpens your appetite, the walk along the coast path has earned you something generous, and the view does most of the work for you. A seafood picnic also happens to be one of the easiest meals to get right, because the finest seaside food is food that needs no cooking at all.

Smoked, cured, pickled and tinned fish are all built for cold eating. They improve with a few hours in a cool bag, they sit happily next to bread and salad, and they ask nothing of you beyond a knife and a lemon. Get the basics right and you can spend your afternoon watching the tide rather than fussing over plates.

The core three: smoked mackerel, crusty bread and lemon

If you pack nothing else, pack these. Smoked mackerel is the great British picnic fish: rich, forgiving, and cheap enough that nobody minds if half of it ends up shared with a hopeful dog. Buy it the day before you go, from a fishmonger or a proper counter, and ask them to leave it in fillets so there are no bones to negotiate on a windy beach.

• Smoked mackerel — plain, peppered or hot-smoked. Two fillets per person is generous; one large fish feeds two comfortably alongside everything else.
• A crusty loaf — sourdough, a cob, a baguette or an Irish soda bread. Buy it the morning you leave, or the day before, as a slightly settled loaf slices far better than a fresh one. Wrap it in a clean tea towel rather than a plastic bag so the crust stays crisp.
• Lemons — take two. One cut into wedges for squeezing, one spare. A squeeze of lemon does more for smoked fish than any sauce you could carry.
• The supporting cast — a small pot of good butter, flaky sea salt, black pepper, and a tub of crème fraîche stirred with chopped dill and a little horseradish.

Salads and sides that travel well

The rule for seaside salads is simple: choose things that are firm, sturdy and happy to be dressed early. Anything delicate will wilt in the heat of a car boot and weep into the rest of your picnic.

• New potatoes with dill and a mustard vinaigrette. Dress them while still warm at home — they soak up the dressing and taste better by the time you eat.
• Tomatoes, red onion and basil, but keep the tomatoes whole and slice them on the beach. Salt them there, not before, or they will turn to water.
• Little Gem or chicory leaves with radishes and cucumber batons. Robust enough to survive a rucksack.
• Samphire when it is in season, blanched at home, cooled and tossed with lemon and a little olive oil.
• Beetroot, feta and mint — a combination that improves after an hour in the bag.
• Oatcakes or rye crackers in place of crisps, which go soft the moment the air turns damp.
• A pork pie or scotch egg if you want something substantial. Both travel far better than a pasty, which really wants to be eaten warm.

What to leave at home

Half of good picnic packing is knowing what not to bring. Anything requiring reheating should stay in the kitchen, and anything fragile or heavily bound in mayonnaise is asking for trouble on a warm day.

• Fried food — fish and chips, battered scampi, calamari. Lukewarm and soggy within twenty minutes.
• Mayonnaise-heavy salads — coleslaw, potato salad, anything creamy. Use oil, vinegar and mustard dressings instead.
• Soft cheeses and cream left in a hot car for hours.
• Glass jars, which have a habit of smashing on pebbles. Decant into plastic tubs.
• Raw fish unless you have a proper cool box, plenty of ice and plan to eat within the hour.

Packing, chilling and reading the beach

Practicalities make or break the day. Freeze two or three water bottles the night before and use them as ice blocks; they will keep the cool bag cold and become perfectly drinkable by mid-afternoon. Pack the heaviest items at the bottom so nothing gets crushed, and take one bag for food and one for everything else.

• Check the tide table before you leave. Never settle below the high-water mark or in a cove where the tide can cut off your route back.
• Find the sheltered side of a headland or wall. A sea breeze is lovely until it is redistributing your salad across the shingle.
• Take a tea towel, a small sharp knife, a board, wet wipes and a bin bag. Take every scrap home, including lemon skins and fish bones, or the gulls will do it for you.
• Weigh down your plates and napkins with a stone, and keep the butter in its tub rather than unwrapped.

A simple menu to copy

For four adults on a decent beach day, this is a reliable, generous spread that fits one cool bag and one rucksack.

• Two smoked mackerel, filleted, wrapped in greaseproof paper
• One large crusty loaf, sliced at home, wrapped in a tea towel
• 500g new potatoes in mustard and dill vinaigrette
• Four tomatoes, one red onion, a handful of basil, dressed on the beach
• Two Little Gems, a punnet of radishes, half a cucumber
• Small pot of dill and horseradish crème fraîche
• Two lemons, cut into wedges
• Butter, sea salt, black pepper
• Oatcakes, a pork pie, a flask of tea and a bottle of something cold

Eat slowly. Let the bread run out before the fish does, drink the tea while the wind takes the heat off it, and stay a little longer than you planned. That, more than any recipe, is what a seaside picnic is for.