Adding Fish into my diet

I eat many kinds of fish, and both bake and pan fry them and do the wrap in parchment paper with veggies option for my most frequent cooking methods. It largely comes down to what's available around you and what are you willing to spend.

A cookbook I'd highly recommend that made me more comfortable cooking fish and which has information and good recipe ideas for all sorts is Mark Bittman's Fish.

I buy frozen tuna steaks and salmon fillets from aldi (i dont know if you are in the uk). They are so simple to cook, straight in the oven. I have them with salad/stirfry veg etc. yummy.

When I moved to the coast I was sad to see red meat is so expensive here...buuut the trade off is seafood is cheaper

We keep a bag of frozen shrimp all the time. I get the already peeled/deveined kind because I'm lazy but you can save a couple dollars if you want and peel them yourself. Shrimp can be tossed into well, anything - but I mostly boil some up for salads, soups, or some kind of stir fry. Quick easy protein.

We also really enjoy tuna steaks. Not canned tuna, but a nice tuna steak. Just sear each side for 1.5 minutes max - it's supposed to be eaten pretty rare. If you don't like rare fish I would skip tuna steaks, just doesn't taste good well done. They are fairly cheap too if you get them frozen.

I also love canned sardines like apud85 mentioned. I just get them in water only, but if you don't like the strong flavor packed in olive oil is also delicious. My boyfriend likes them packed in a spicy horseradish sauce of some kind. They can be high in salt sometimes so just kind of keep an eye on your sodium if you have any BP problems.

Salmon fillets are also super easy to bake or grill. We get it fresh when it's on sale. Actually once a week we do "nice" seafood night where we get something fresh on sale at the grocery. Sometime's it's salmon, or catfish, or mahi, etc...that's our fancy dinner for the week. Pair some good seafood with veggies and a glass of wine, delicious.

I don't know if you like the taste of seafood haha, but generally "white fish" are less flavorful on their own. You need to add more spices/flavors to them and they generally taste like whatever you cook them in, which is good if you aren't actually a fan of fishy tastes. Meatier cuts like salmon, tuna, swordfish, etc, have a much stronger (delicious) taste.

And of course, mussels/clams/oysters etc if you like the texture are DELICIOUS. And also pretty low calorie. You can go through a pound of clams and it's barely any calories (including shell weight, obv), but I find "working" for food like picking through crabs and shells and stuff tends to make me eat less and I don't even notice it.

A "fool proof" method of baking really thick cuts of fish like a thick salmon or mahi mahi is to wrap it tightly in foil with a little olive oil and bake it at like 375 for ~40 minutes. Because the liquid is trapped it won't dry out, keeps it very juicy. If you're doing a more dry heat cooking like just open in the oven or on the grill you just need to watch it doesn't get overdone. That 40 minutes may be overkill for some cuts, just depends on what you're doing. But foil wrapping fish is my go-to way to bake things I'm not used to cooking, always comes out perfect.

JeralynSh wrote: »

My husband and I eat a loooooot of fish! There are so many different kinds and so many different ways to prepare, but some of our favorites include:
poached salmon
salmon en croute
baked scallops
crab cakes
lobster spaghetti
grilled swordfish
and I even made fish fingers & custard once.

Tee-hee

This thread is making me hungry! Not much access to any fish (besides canned tuna) where I'm at, but remembering these great suggestions for when I'm back in the US!