Fish Sticks Recipe

Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on a package of fish sticks? There are so many unpronounceable ingredients that it’s a little disturbing. And often the first ingredient in minced fish.

That means it has been pressed into stick shapes and held together with some kind of binding agent.  I don’t know about you, but I think that any home cook can do better for their family than store-bought fish sticks. Use a nice mild fish like pollock or haddock for the kids, and then offer a couple of dipping sauces - one the kids will enjoy and another for the adults.

White fish is very economical to buy, and sustainable sources are easy to find, as well.  Make a whole bunch of fish sticks at one time, and freeze some for another meal or two. Here’s a great opportunity to break out your FoodSaver to freeze the fish in.

Fish Sticks

It is hard to say how many this recipe will feed - it completely depends on who is eating, how many are eating, and how hungry they are. Figure 2-3 fish sticks per young child and maybe 4-6 per older kids and adults.  Feel free to pan fry or bake these. They will be very tasty either way.

• 1 pound mild white fish fillets, such as pollock, haddock, flounder or tilapia
• juice of half a lemon
• 1 cup flour
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 2 egg whites, lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 cups dried fine bread crumbs, preferably panko
• 1/2-1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning (or your favorite spice blend)
• olive oil (not extra virgin) for frying, optional

Cut the fillets into sticks of as equal a size as you can get, approximately 3-4″x1/2″.

Sprinkle the fish with lemon juice. Set aside.

Stir salt and pepper, to taste, into the flour and put in a shallow dish.

Place the egg whites in a shallow dish.

Whisk your preferred seasoning blend into the bread crumbs, and put in a shallow dish.

Spray a cooling rack with pan spray and set over a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan.

Dredge each fish stick in lightly in the seasoned flour, knocking off the excess. Then, dip in the egg white. Let drain a few seconds. Lastly, dredge in the seasoned bread crumbs. Set each stick on the rack.

At this point, you can either bake these or pan fry.

To bake:

Preheat the oven to 450F.

Let the fish sticks set up for about ten minutes on the rack. This will help to keep the breading from flaking off.

Bake on the cooling rack/jelly roll pan set up until the fish is cooked and the breading is nice and golden brown, about ten minutes.

To pan fry:

Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat until hot.

Add olive oil to a depth of about 1/4″.

When the oil is hot, fry the sticks, making sure not to crowd the pan.  Turn as each side cooks and turns golden brown. Total cooking time will be about ten minutes.

Remove to paper towels to drain.

Kid-Friendly Sauces

• ketchup
• honey mustard (simply whisk together honey and mustard, to taste)
• the kids’ favorite barbecue sauce
• ranch dressing or other salad dressing
• tartar sauce
• raita or tzatziki sauce
• marinara sauce

Adult-Friendly Sauces

• Hollandaise sauce seasoned with parsley and dill
• Cocktail sauce with horseradish
• Soy sauce and Sriracha
• a mixture of mirin, dark soy sauce, minced fresh ginger and a pinch of sugar
• curry sauce
• sauce puttanesca

Flounder Fillets à la Moutarde
Cookbook Challenge #1

I wanted to start my Cookbook Recipe Challenge off with a quick and easy recipe from one of my oldest cookbooks, The New New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne with Pierre Franey. I have no idea where or when I picked up this extraordinary cookbook but I know I haven’t cooked nearly enough recipes from it.

With over 1,000 recipes, it’s a worthwhile buy; just reading about the chefs who came out to Mr. Claiborne’s East Hampton, New York home to cook with him is worth the price of the book alone. And, this is a companion volume to his 1961 best-selling classic, The New York Times Cookbook.

The first chapter, De Gustibus, is a must read for any foodie who wants to learn more about “the revolution in American cooking and food awareness, entertaining and dining customs.” He goes on to talk about some his own personal pet peeves and preferences, something you know I enjoy doing on my website.

This recipe calls for 8 small, skinless, boneless flounder fillets but at my fish market, they only had a large fluke fillet weighing in at about 1-1/3 pounds. I’m not sure where you could even find 8 small flounder fillets totaling 1 pound with the minimum size allowed to be kept at 18 inches. Maybe he means cutting a large fillet into smaller ones.

Note: Be sure to read my post called Fluke or Flounder – What’s the Difference? I think you’ll find it both informative and interesting.

He also talks about making your own mayonnaise — that is a great idea and easy to do, but for most of us work-at-home dads, this is not something we often find time for. I highly suggest you give it a try sometime just so you can taste the difference between homemade and commercial. It’s huge!

Here’s my recipe for Homemade Mayonnaise.  And if you are wondering who makes the best commercial mayo, check out my post on What Mayonnaise Tastes Best?.

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Here’s my big old fluke fillet. Well I think it’s fluke and not flounder. Be sure to take it out of the refrigerator in advance of cooking so you’re not sticking a cold piece of fish under the broiler.

Here’s my mayo, mustard and parsley mixture to spread all over the fish.

Season the fish with some salt and pepper to taste after placing it onto a roasting pan.

Spread the mayo, mustard, parsley coating on top of the fish.

Here’s how my flounder looked after it came out from under the broiler. Looks a little overcooked but it was not. You’ll want to experiment on exactly how long to cook it and from what distance from the broiler heat source.

Here are my wife’s famous roasted scalloped potatoes. What we don’t eat for supper, we get to enjoy with breakfast.

Flounder Fillets à la Moutarde
Serves 4

Ingredients

• 8 small, skinless, boneless flounder fillets, about 1 – 1.25 pounds
Salt & Pepper, to taste
• 1 tablespoon peanut, vegetable or corn oil
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, preferably homemade
• 1 tablespoon imported mustard, such as Dijon or Dusseldorf
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley
• 4 lemon wedges

How to Make at Home

This is a very quick and easy dish to prepare at home. We served it with steamed asparagus and scallop-cut roasted potatoes that take more time to prepare and cook than the fish.

Start by taking the fish out of the refrigerator while you prep the ingredients and preheat the broiler.
Before preheating the broiler, be sure to get the top oven rack into a position so the fish is about 3 to 4 inches from the broiler heat source. You don’t want to be messing with the rack after it gets hot.

In a medium sized bowl, mix the mayonnaise and mustard and stir in the parsley.

Place the flounder fillets onto a baking sheet. I sprayed my baking sheet with a little oil first to prevent sticking. Brush the mayo/mustard mix evenly over the fillet(s) and place the pan under the broiler about 3 to 4 inches from the heat source.

The recipe says to “broil for about 1 minute or until golden brown on top and the fish is just cooked through.” Now maybe Craig Claiborne’s flounder fillets were thinner than mine, but I found it took 2 to 3 minutes for them to be cooked through so keep a close watch on them when cooking.

Serve with potatoes or rice, a favorite vegetable and don’t forget to add the lemon wedges.

Take The Reluctant Gourmet Cookbook Challege

So here’s my first recipe of the challenge - what are you going to cook? You can leave comments about recipes you want to try at my post RG Cookbook Challenge or post them on my Facebook page. Either way, I would love to hear from those of you who are going to try to cook one new recipe from one of your cookbooks every two weeks.

Related Topics

The Reluctant Gourmet Cookbook Challenge

Moussaka - Cookbook Challenge #2

What’s the Difference Between a Fluke and a Flounder?

One of the fun adventures my girls had on our vacation this year was going sea fishing on the commercial fishing boat Miss Avalon out of Avalon, NJ.  My wife was in charge of this particular outing as I am strictly a bay fisherman - I leave the surging swells to those with cast iron stomachs.  Turns out, my wife doesn’t have one either, but that’s another story!  You can read about their adventure at My Daughters’ Catch of the Day

Both the girls caught fish out on the Miss Avalon.  My older daughter Nell’s fish was large enough to capture second place in the boat’s pool.  First prize was cash, and Nell got a free fishing excursion to go along with her one pound sea bass.  Maddie, who was the driving force behind the deep sea fishing trip in the first place, ended up with a 3/4 pound flounder.  Or was it a fluke?  Either way, if you’ve never seen one up close and alive, it is a most…unfortunate-looking fish.

Early Life

Flukes and flounders are types of flatfish.  That means that, while they started life swimming upright, during the larval stage, they lay on either their left or right side and the eye facing towards the bottom migrated to be top-facing.

So, some flat fish are right-side-up (their left eye migrated to the right side) and some are left-side-up, meaning that their right eye migrated to the left side.  What makes a particular fish turn into a left-side or a right-side fish? And what makes a “normal” fish evolve into a flat fish?  I honestly have no idea about the former, but I’m sure the latter adaptation was for camouflage while hunting for food.

The top side of flat fish are mottled and dark, making them blend in well on the ocean bottoms. And as they are bottom dwellers, this is a very good thing as they can surprise their unsuspecting prey.

All Fluke Are Flounder but Not All Flounder Are Fluke

Generally speaking, left-side up flounder are flukes, and right-side up flounders are called flounders.  That sounds easy enough to remember, but it gets worse.  Flukes are also called “summer flounder,” and flounder, or right-side fish, are called “winter flounder.”

It also turns out that, of the 500 plus flatfish species, there are five species that are all called flounder.  It’s good to know that there is a difference, but I would be hard pressed to taste the difference between a fluke or a flounder.

Four of the five flounder species are found in the Atlantic:  summer flounder (left-side up flukes), winter flounder, southern flounder and European flounder.  The fifth, the Japanese flounder, is found in the Pacific Ocean.

Unless you are studying fish biology, and I’m certainly not, I think the main thing to remember is that all flukes are flounders but not all flounders are flukes. And all flounder is tasty.

Fluke & Flounder Fun Facts

I did find out some kind of fun facts about flounder and fluke, though, no matter what name you call them.  Because they are so flat, large flounder and fluke (at least 8-10 pounds) are sometimes referred to as doormats or snow shoes. Finally, something about these fish that actually makes sense!

Another fun fact is that summer flounder and winter flounder are aptly named.  Summer flounder (fluke) winter off of the continental shelf and only come into the bay (to be caught) in the summer. Winter flounder come into the bay in the fall and stay through the winter until the spring.  Sounds to me like fluke and flounder don’t like to stay around each other very much.  It could be because fluke have teeth and winter flounder don’t, but don’t quote me on that.

As to the kind of weird names: I usually think of a fluke as a freak occurrence and flounder as a verb meaning wobbling about without a way to steer.  One of the possible root words of fluke is the old German word flah, meaning flat. I’m still not sure how something flat can also be a freak occurrence, but I don’t guess it’s every day that a fish’s eyes migrate from one side of its head to the other.

As to the name flounder, it comes from the Dutch word flodderen, which means “to flop about.”  Using that definition, all fish pretty much flounder when caught, but flounders can flop about on the bottom of the ocean, kicking up sand to cover themselves, kind of like how rays do.  Also, because they swim sideways, it can look like they don’t have a very good way to steer themselves.

No matter how they look or swim, they are very tasty when simply cooked. Here’s a recipe for broiled flounder in lemon butter and be sure to check out Pan Fried Flounder with Potatoes and Parsley. This is how my mom prepared fresh flounder for us as kids.

Broiled Flounder in Lemon Butter

For the fish

• 4-6 flounder fillets
• 2 Tablespoons melted butter
• 2 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste

For serving

• 2-3 very thinly sliced lemon rounds per fillet
• fresh Italian or curly parsley, minced

Rinse and pat dry the fillets.  Arrange in on a baking tray.

Combine the melted butter and lemon juice and drizzle evenly over the fish, reserving about 1 tablespoon.

Lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Broil the fish on the highest rack until the fish is white and is just starting to flake, about 5-7 minutes.

To serve, drizzle on the last tablespoon of lemon butter.  Arrange lemon slices on each fillet and sprinkle with the freshly chopped herbs.