Good Friday Fish Recipe Inspo

It’s a Catholic tradition to eat fish on Good Friday, but lots of non-religious folk have adopted the custom over the years too. Good Friday marks the day that Jesus gave his flesh for our sins, which is why meat is avoided on the day and swapped for fish instead.

For many households, Good Friday means a fish’n’chip tea to kick off the long weekend, while others will stick to simple steamed fish with potatoes and veg, or perhaps fish in a butter or parsley sauce. But all of these are quite plain ways to eat fish, and we think this Good Friday tradition could be jazzed up a little, without its origins being lost.

Here are a few ideas for getting some extra omega-3 into your diet this Easter weekend – you’ll need it before all that chocolate-eating commences:

Salmon is naturally rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been proven to lower cholesterol, and they’re good for your hair and skin too. It’s also a great source of protein and it tastes excellent too, so we all love salmon. Salmon loves us.

Salmon is pretty tasty all by itself and even more so when it’s smoked, but adding a glaze really takes things to the next level. Take this honey and mustard glaze from Gimme Some Oven, for example. It’s the perfect blend of sticky and sweet with a fiery mustard kick too.

Serve it up with some steamed greens and rice or a fresh salad with a squeeze of lemon juice squoze (?) over the top. Yum.

Fish pie is one of the ultimate comfort foods. But if you’re a lover of spicy food, it can be a little lacking in taste. When you’re the kind of person who covers literally everything – roast dinners, toast, cereal, everything – in hot sauce, fish in a buttery sauce topped with mashed potato doesn’t quite cut it.

So we propose giving the humble fish pie an Indian-inspired makeover for a Good Friday meal to remember. Start by making up a fish curry, like this one from Hari Ghotra, which uses traditional Keralan flavours. Place some in your pie dish, and freeze your leftovers for a quick, tasty midweek dinner one evening when you don’t have much time.

Then, cook up some bombay potatoes – Tales from the Kitchen Shed has a gorgeous but simple recipe for these. Carefully spoon these on top of your curry to create your pie topping, then bake in the oven for around ten minutes to bring the flavours of everything together and you’ll have a fish pie, but not as you know it.

Fish and chips is a Good Friday staple in many households, but it’s perhaps not the healthiest way to start the long weekend, particularly when your plans involve eating your bodyweight in rabbit-shaped chocolates.

With a few clever tweaks though, you can still enjoy a chippy-style tea, but without all that grease and salt.

Enter the Tefal ActiFry. Chips cooked in this bad boy require only the tiniest amount of oil, so they’re a lot healthier than the ones from the chippy. ‘Batter’ your own fish too, by breaking up slices of wholemeal bread into crumbs, adding seasoning, dipping your fish in egg and then coating in the breadcrumb mix. Bake in the oven until cooked through, then serve with mushy peas, a squeeze of lemon, vinegar and red sauce.

Good Friday fish doesn’t have to just be about haddock, salmon, cod or pollock – any seafood counts. This seriously scrummy seafood tagliatelle from I Am a Food Blog is creamy, tomato-y and spicy all at the same time.

The recipe suggests using prawns, scallops and squid, but feel free to use whatever seafood you can get your hands on – from the supermarket/local fishmonger’s; not from an afternoon crabbing at the seaside.

You can make fishcakes out of pretty much anything. Obviously, fish is a good starting point. But tins of tuna or salmon, leftover odds and ends from a fish pie, bits of veg, mashed potato, egg – all of these can combine to make some delicious fishcakes.

The best fishcakes are the kind with a surprise inside. We don’t mean like those cakes where you cut through the middle and Smarties fall out – that would be weird and wrong. No, we mean cheese. Gooey, melty, oozy, lovely cheese.

Carly Cooks has a recipe for making your own smoked mackerel fishcakes with a melting cheese middle that are absolutely beautiful. We recommend serving with a slice of bread or some homemade ActiFry chips so you’ve got something to mop all of that amazing cheese up with.

For pescetarians, the burger selection at popular fast food outlets leaves a lot to be desired. Take the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish for example. It’s basically a giant fish finger on a burger bun with cheese and tartar sauce. There are better ways to celebrate Good Friday with a burger than that. Trust us.

There’s these Thai-style fish burgers from Kitchen Sanctuary, for instance, which combine the flavours of lemongrass, ginger, coriander, garlic, cumin and chilli to create some gorgeous patties that would also work great as fishcakes, if you don’t fancy the bun – you don’t get that option at Maccy D’s do you?

Embrace fish’s excellent ability to take to flavour this Good Friday and experiment with your dinner – it’s what Jesus would have wanted.