Like most parents, I'm always in search of recipes that are easy, tasty, healthy and popular with the whole family. At our house, one of the favorites in this category is crispy tilapia. I buy the fish whenever it's on sale at HT and keep it in the freezer -- it's easy to defrost in the fridge a day or two before we use it. I usually cook two filets at a time -- slice each in half, with three halves for the grown ups and one half cut into nuggets for the kids (we call them "special nuggets" to make them more appealing).
What really makes the recipe easy to prepare is that I mix up a ziploc bag of the breading (usually double what's listed here, which gets us through several dinners) so that I can just pull it out of the pantry when we're ready to eat. The only downfall of the recipe is that the leftovers aren't as good, so you're better off just cooking enough for one meal. For sides, I like to steam or stir-fry whatever green veggies are in the fridge, plus some ready-made mashed potatoes.
Crispy Tilapia
Ingredients:
- 3 lbs tilapia fillets, about 10
- 1/3 cup flour, for dusting fish
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
- salt
- pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 tablespoons Old Bay Seasoning
- canola oil, to cover bottom of large pan
Directions:
- Salt and pepper fish. Dust fillets with 1/3 cup of flour.
- Mix egg with buttermilk in one bowl.
- Mix flour, corn meal, baking soda and baking powder, Old Bay in another bowl.
- Dip all floured fish into egg then flour mixture.
- Heat oil medium-high in large pan.
- Fry in three batches, turning after 2 minutes on each side.
- Salt as soon as you take out of pan.
- Serve with tartar sauce.
Just an aside, you can get tilapia at Costco and then freeze it into the portion sizes you need. The only downside is that it usually isn't American caught.
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