Lighter Oven-Fried Fish - Cooks Illustrated

Published April 11, 2007.

What's the allure of fried fish? For starters, it tastes great. But it can be awfully heavy.

The Problem

Typical methods of frying fish can make a bacon cheeseburger look like diet fare.

The Goal

We wanted to create a recipe for crunchy and delicious oven-fried fish; one which allows you to reap the nutritious benefits of the fish itself.

The Solution

To create the crunchy coating, we turned to Melba-toast crumbs, moistened with a little vegetable oil. Oven-baking was the obvious choice over deep fat frying; the fish became gold and crunchy when baked with just a liberal amount of vegetable cooking spray. (We did need to set the fillets on a wire rack over a foil-lined baking sheet.) We found that many fish, including haddock, catfish, trout, tilapia, and even thick sole fillets work well—the only problem occurred with very thin and delicate fish fillets, as they had a tendency to break apart.

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America’s Test Kitchen is a 2,500-square-foot kitchen located just outside of Boston. It is the home of Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated magazines and is the workday destination for more than three dozen test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes until we understand how and why they work and arrive at the best version. We also test kitchen equipment and supermarket ingredients in search of brands that offer the best value and performance. You can watch us work by tuning in to America’s Test Kitchen (www.americastestkitchen.com) on public television.