With simple prep and the correct temperature, anyone can make excellent Asian #seabass in their home kitchen!
Crunchy broiled Sea Bass straight out of the oven
I love to mix it up during the week and once in a while, splurge on some Sea Bass. While it is typically some of the most expensive fish you can get at the store, it can handle a lot of heat and marinade to produce some excellent texture. It's a meatier fish, but still nice and flakey; if prepared right, can be worth the extra money and it's a nice change from the typical salmon or tilapia that most people are comfortable cooking.
My favorite way to prepare #seabass is to broil it in the oven with an Asian marinade. You can start up to 24 hours in advance or even 4 hours in advance like I did here.
Technique
Starting with the basics here, I purchased a 1.3lbs Sea Bass filet @costco and cut it into 4 portions. Make sure to use a sharp knife and really slice through the skin at the bottom. I recommend cutting each piece in half to get a consistent size (cut the large piece in half, then the two halves in half, or just ask your fish monger to cut the filet into 4 pieces if you can).
Next step is to prepare the marinade. For this recipe, I chose to use 4 key ingredients that everyone should keep in their kitchen if you cook stir-fry or Asian Cuisine. Soy sauce, rice vinegar, Mirin, sesame oil, black pepper and pure cane sugar.
Once you mix together all of the liquids, very well with a wire whisk, combine the ingredients in a large tupperware or plastic bag and place in your fridge to marinade for up to 24 hours, but 4 hours is just enough as well. Make sure to flip the fish during your marinade so all of the meat gets an opportunity to soak up all the vinegary, salty and sweet goodness.
The key to great fish is to let the protein rest at room temperature before you add it to the heat. This goes for all proteins as well!
Set your oven broiler to 500 and let that heat up nicely as you place the Bass on a racked broiler pan. If you don't have one you can also use a cookie sheet and a standard rack, but high heat might effect your cookware so make sure you have a high heat pan for the future. I always spray the rack before adding the fish with canola or olive oil to help get the protein off the of the rack when you are done. In this case, I also like to spray the fish skin to crisp it up.
Make sure to place the fish as close to the top the oven/broiler as possible so you can get it cooked nice and crispy. I recommend thick Sea Bass like this to be broiled on high for 6-7 minutes, turning on your vent fan and even opening up a window to allow for more air flow. Make sure to keep an eye on it towards the end of the cook, as you don't want it to go for too long and it will burn.
For this particular dish, I played around with plating, utilizing summer acorn squash blended with wasabi powder and sesame seeds and added a small pool of miso soup to deliver a different plating with something new I hadn't tried! Other times it's great to go with polenta, mashed potatoes or rice as well, depending on the style you are feeling that evening.
To finish off this dish, I plated the fish ontop of the squash puree, adding crispy brussels sprouts, charred green beans and topped the fish with chopped green onion and flakey Maldon sea salt! Bon Appetite!
Ingredients
yields 4 portions & takes around 10 minutes of cooking time and 10 minutes of prep time
4 filets of Sea Bass (6 oz portions)
1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup Mirin
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
1/4 cup pure cane sugar
1 tsp black pepper
Step 1:
Combine all ingredients and whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Marinate fish for 4-24 hours in a tupperware or plastic bag and bring to room temperature before cooking
Step 2:
Preheat broiler to high or 500 degrees and place bass on broiler pan with aluminum foil below the rack to catch any drippings. (Make sure fish is raised off the foil or pan so you don't start a grease fire!)
Step 3:
Once the oven is preheated, cook fish for 6-7 minutes with the top oven rack as close to the heat element as possible without touching the fish. Make sure you watch the fish towards the end of the cook so it does not burn.
Step 4:
Plate your broiled fish with the sides of your choosing and don't forget to squeeze a fresh lemon or lime.