Easy baked fish recipe

In only 15 minutes, one can just throw everything into the pan where fish is baked with a creamy lemon sauce. This recipe can be made no matter how hectic your day or household has been because it's this easy:

Mix butter, cream, garlic, mustard and lemon; pour over fish; and bake – no flipping required.

And out comes this tender baked fish fillets with a beautiful lemon cream sauce that's perfect with any white-meat fish, preferably Basa fish from Bengal Meat!

Many naysayers might describe the idea of baked fish with the words pale, colourless and bland. However, this one is going to be an explosion of flavours on your palate!

The Lemon Cream Sauce for Fish

At first, the simple sauce can come across as a bit unimpressive when you mix it all up, but once it's baked on the hot bed of the baking dish, the fish juices mix in with it and transform into an incredible sauce. It's basically like making a sauce with real homemade fish stock.

What this tastes like

Despite the name of the recipe, which implies that the sauce is rich but actually, it is not! Once you finish baking it, you will experience a taste that is kind of light and fresh, yet a bit creamy. For those who love mopping up the leftover sauce with bread or spooning over mashed potato, there will be plenty!

What you need

Not very much!

White Fish fillet – any fairly flat white fish fillet is fine here, preferably Basa fillets, about 2 cm/ 4/5" thick or less. Any thicker, and the fish will take longer to bake which will thicken the sauce too much, so you will need to thin it with a splash of water.

Onion — Use the white part of green onions as a sub, or really finely minced normal onion.

Dijon Mustard — sauce thickener. Can sub with other non-seedy mustards.

Garlic — goes in almost everything in my world!

Cream — use heavy/thickened cream if you can, to help with sauce consistency.

Butter — just a tablespoon of it. There is no substitute!

Lemon — lime would work in an emergency situation.

Olive oil — Just splash enough on the empty dish before laying out the fish.

Salt, pepper, paprika — A pinch or two is just fine, depending on your taste.

Spring or Green Onion — Use it for garnish (Optional)

How to do it

Splash and coat the baking dish with one tablespoon of olive oil. Add enough slices of onions as a bed for the fish. Season the Basa fish fillets with salt, pepper and paprika properly and lay the fillets on the dish.

Now comes the sauce, add the butter, Dijon mustard, minced garlic, cream, lemon juice, salt, pepper and paprika. Heat it up in a microwave oven for 40 seconds.

Pour it all over the fillet resting on the dish and put it into your electric oven for 15 minutes at 220° Celsius!

Add chopped green onions as garnish once you take out the dish.

Dinner is on the table in just 15 minutes. Tender, juicy fish with a creamy lemon sauce. A really fantastic way to make baked fish — it's so good!

You can try it with sides like mashed potatoes, garlic or steamed rice or even just plain lettuce salads.

Photo and Food: K Tanzeel Zaman