Fish Recipes From The Deep Blue (?!) UK Waters

Fishing can be a fishy business (both literally and figuratively); lots of people don’t realise you need a special licence to fish in UK waters, and sometimes extra permissions depending on what kind of fish you’re after.

Let’s be honest – it’s a lot easier and quicker to just go to the supermarket or your local fishmonger’s to stock up instead. But that doesn’t mean you can’t stay true to UK waters. Fish including bream, salmon, trout, cod, haddock and crayfish are all common in the rivers and seas around Britain, and they’re all incredibly tasty too.

So, once you’ve caught your fish – either by simply taking it off the fishmonger or by spending eight hours on the bank of a river in the rain – what should you do with it? Try out these recipes, that’s what! They’re whale-y good. Okay, we’re sorry, we know we can do batter…

Talking of batter … our first recipe is for a healthy twist on the classic Friday night supper of fish’n’chips, courtesy of Slimming Eats.

It involves coating the fish – using cod or haddock will give you the closest thing to a chippy tea but without all the grease! – in a batter made from flour and sparkling water, which might sound unusual, but gives it that oh-so moreish crispy batter effect we all know and love.

You can cook the fish in your Tefal ActiFry, keeping the amount of oil you’re using to a minimum, and do some potatoes in there too for a healthy side. Then it’s entirely down to you whether you finish it all off with mushy peas or curry sauce or gravy or just good ol’ salt and vinegar.

You might think that batter is unbeatable when it comes to a coating for fish, but might we suggest chorizo as an alternative and arguably better (the batter pun won’t work again here, sadly) option?

Lucy Loves has geniusly (which we’re not 100 per cent sure is a real word) blitzed chorizo with breadcrumbs and a few herbs to create a cod coating with a difference in her excellent recipe.

This one’s more of a recipe for carnivores than pescetarians, naturally.

Sometimes simple recipes are the best, and this trout with lemon and garlic from The Kitchen Shed is a classic example.

The recipe uses rainbow trout, which is covered in a rub made from olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and parsley for a super simple but super tasty midweek meal. Serve on a bed of rice, letting that drizzle soak into every grain, or with a fresh salad for a gorgeous summer meal.

Smoked haddock chowder is a lovely and comforting recipe, it’s reasonably healthy and it’s really easy to make. This recipe from Cook Sister is for a smoked haddock chowder that includes potatoes and leeks for added heartiness.

It’s probably not what you want to be eating in the middle of a heatwave, but it’s certainly one to add to your repertoire with autumn approaching. We highly recommend serving with chunks of crusty buttered bread for dunking. Delish.

Crayfish, and other seafood like prawns and mussels, work brilliantly with spicy flavours, so teaming them with a hot tomato sauce and some pasta like in this spicy crayfish spaghetti recipe from Chilli Up North is an excellent idea.

Don’t worry too much about the heat, as the recipe uses cream (or yoghurt if you want a lower-fat alternative) to cool things down, and there are so many other gorgeous flavours in there from the crayfish, veg, paprika and even a splash of sherry – ooh hello! – that you won’t be overwhelmed by the chilli.

Most people usually go for cod, haddock or salmon when they’re cooking fish at home, but that means they’re missing out on the taste sensation that is sea bream. It has a similar taste to sea bass, and it works brilliantly when teamed with strong flavours like fennel, which is in season right now in the UK.

This recipe from Easy Peasy Foodie pairs sea bream with fennel perfectly, with a few squeezes of lemon juice really helping to lift the other ingredients. Baked with potatoes as part of a traybake, this is a fabulously easy dish to cook that’s full of flavour.

Have you ever tried fish in a curry before? You should! White fish like cod can easily replace chicken in a korma or a tikka masala, and salmon is also great for lapping up spices, like in this salmon, spinach and tomato curry recipe from Rachel’s Kitchen NZ.

This dish is packed with spices including ginger, cumin, turmeric, chilli powder and garam masala, all of which infuse the fish with beautiful flavours and go perfectly with the tomato-based sauce.

See, there’s nothing fishy at all about any of these recipes – well, there is, obvs, but only in a good way.