CRISPY BREADED COD FILLETS
SERVES 4 • TO PREP 35 MINUTES • STORE 1 TO 24 HOURS • TO FINISH 1 HOUR
WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS: Baked fish with a crispy, flavorful crumb topping is a satisfying, delicious, and healthy meal. But could it be convenient, too? We wanted a recipe that would deliver fish with a crunchy crumb topping that actually stuck to the fish, and we wanted to be able to make it up to a day in advance. Keeping this lofty goal in mind, we began from the top: the breading. Traditional bread crumbs are prone to sogginess, but in the test kitchen, we’ve had great success with extra-crispy panko bread crumbs. However, even panko lost its crispness after a night in the refrigerator. Toasting the panko on the stovetop with melted butter solved the problem; even a day later, the toasted topping was crispy and crunchy. To get it to stick to the fillets, we spread mayonnaise on top of the fish fillets before pressing on the crumbs. We had the texture down, but tasters thought that the dish tasted bland. Since we already had the skillet out to toast the panko, we decided to add aromatics to the skillet to bump up the breading’s flavor. Adding an egg yolk, some lemon zest, and pepper to the mayonnaise enriched the flavor of the fish and rounded out the flavor profile of our dish. You can substitute haddock or halibut for the cod. See the sidebar that follows the recipe bellow down.
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large shallot, minced
Salt and pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme or ¼ teaspoon dried
¾ cup panko bread crumbs
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 large egg yolk
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
4 (6- to 8-ounce) skinless cod fillets, 1 to 1½ inches thick
TO PREP
1. Melt butter in 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Add shallot and ½ teaspoon salt and cook until softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in garlic and thyme and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add panko and ¼ teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring constantly, until evenly browned, about 4 minutes. Transfer panko mixture to shallow dish and let cool for 10 minutes. Stir in parsley.
2. Whisk mayonnaise, egg yolk, lemon zest, and ¼ teaspoon pepper together in a bowl. Pat cod dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Brush tops of fillets evenly with mayonnaise mixture. Working with 1 fillet at a time, dredge coated side in panko mixture, pressing gently to adhere. Place fillets, crumb side up, on a large plate.
TO STORE
3. Cover and refrigerate cod for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.
TO FINISH AND SERVE
4. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. Set wire rack in a rimmed baking sheet and spray with vegetable oil spray. Transfer cod to prepared rack and bake until fish flakes apart when gently prodded with a paring knife and registers 140 degrees, 45 to 55 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through baking. Serve.
The sidebar: KEEPING BREADING CRISP
For a buttery bread-crumb topping that stayed crisp even overnight, we started with extra-crispy panko bread crumbs. Toasting them in butter kept them from turning soggy and gave them great flavor. To glue the topping securely to the cod fillets, we used mayonnaise whisked with an egg yolk and seasoned with lemon juice and pepper.
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