Baked Panko-Crusted Fish

Hello, again! This week's recipe was inspired by my desire to eat a fish that isn't salmon for dinner! My family's go-to fish supper, which we have once a week without fail, is salmon marinated in teriyaki sauce and baked for about 20 minutes at 400ºF. It tastes fine and it's super easy to prep, but having it once every seven days gets a bit tedious. The last time we cooked a fish that wasn't salmon (or tuna from a can, which I'm not counting as real fish here) was probably more than a decade ago when my dad tried to disguise some sort of white fish meat in a bowl of rice. I think I was maybe 7 years old at the time, but I clearly remember no one enjoying that meal.

Either way, I wanted to revamp our boring fish dish, so I did some Googling, and stumbled upon Diana Rattray's recipe from The Spruce. It says that it takes 35 minutes total to make (15 minutes to prep and 20 minutes to cook), which didn't seem too challenging, so I went and bought the ingredients.

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 1 to 1 1/2 pounds fish fillets, such as haddock, cod, catfish, pollock, or similar mild white fish, cut into 4-ounce to 6-ounce portions

• I bought about 1.3 lbs of cod from my local grocery store, and cut it up into 4 sections at home.

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 1 cup panko bread crumbs

• I completely miscalculated the amount of panko bread crumbs I had in my super disorganized pantry, so I only had enough panko for 3 of the pieces. I used breadcrumbs for the 4th piece, which is the one on the far right of my photos.

• 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

• There were some green flecks (wow, that sounds very sketchy when I put it that way) in the panko crumbs, so I had that substitute for the parsley. My family has never used parsley before, so I'm hesitant to buy it for reasons I should probably explore with a psychologist.

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

• 2 large eggs or 1/2 cup egg substitute

• I used regular large brown eggs because no one in my family has an egg allergy. Plus, buying egg substitute scares me (see note on parsley).

• 1​ teaspoon Cajun or Creole seasoning

• I skipped this because my family can't handle spice well.

• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise

• Lemon wedges, for serving

• We are not fancy people, so lemons were not included in my version.

Instructions:

1. Heat the oven to 425ºF.

2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil and then spray it with nonstick cooking spray. (I couldn't find our cooking spray, so I brushed some vegetable oil over the foil.)

3. Sprinkle both sides of the fish pieces with salt and freshly ground black pepper. (At the end of her recipe, Rattray notes that you could also add some garlic powder to the fish during this step, which I did.)

4. In a wide bowl, combine the panko crumbs and the parsley.

5. Put the flour in a shallow, wide bowl.

6. In another wide bowl, whisk the eggs or egg substitute with the Cajun seasonings and mayonnaise. (Many bowls were soiled in the making of this fish.)

7. Dip the fish fillets in the plain flour, coating each piece thoroughly.

8. Dip the flour-coated fillets in the egg mixture and then coat them with the panko crumb mixture, pressing lightly to help crumbs adhere to the fish. Repeat with the remaining fish. (Holy moly, this is a messy process. I completely forgot everything I've learned about keeping one hand for dipping in the wet ingredients and the other for dry ingredients, so this was a sticky, crumby step. Also, the fish didn't want to seep up the egg mixture in some areas, which made it difficult to adhere the crumbs to a few spots.)

9. Arrange the fish on the prepared baking sheet.

10. Bake for about 16 to 20 minutes or until fish is cooked through and flakes easily with a fork. The time in the oven depends on thickness, so adjust for very thin or very thick fish fillets. (My fish cooked for 16 minutes.)

11. Serve with lemon wedges and tartar sauce or remoulade sauce. (Once again, my family is not fancy, so this was served with mashed potatoes, and I will upload that recipe in the near future.)

Variations Courtesy of Rattray:

1. Add 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper or a dash of your favorite hot pepper sauce to the egg mixture for additional spicy flavor.

2. Replace the Creole seasoning with a seasoned salt blend or salt-free seasoning.

3. Sprinkle the fish fillets lightly with garlic powder along with the salt and pepper.

4. Add 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese to the panko bread crumbs.

My Conclusions:

1. This was a hectic meal to prep. I was not only making the fish, but also trying to prevent my mashed potatoes from boiling over. (It only happened twice. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe three times.) However, the mashed potatoes turned out delicious!

2. The fish, on the other hand, was very salty. My mom had no problems with it even though her taste buds are very sensitive to sodium, but my dad and I thought that the fish was very salty. I used a coarse sea salt from a salt grinder for this, so I'm thinking that some spots got hit with a bit more salt than others? And even though it was overly salted, the fish was still terribly bland.

3. Overall, I was quite disappointed with this recipe. Maybe I should've looked into seasoning it a bit more with the Cajun or Creole seasoning? Either way, I'm in no rush to make this again. Especially since my kitchen still reeks of the Boston Harbor.

Thanks for reading!

-SUPPERGIRL