NOW CLOSED: Talk to Young's about your favourite fish supper, or how to encourage your children to eat fish - you could win a Jamie book and vouchers!

[AnnMumsnet]

You may have seen we've been working with Young's on promoting their range of frozen fish.

Young's say "The Jamie Oliver by Young's range - featuring MSC-certified pollock fish fingers and crispy salmon & pollock fishcakes - focuses on simple, delicious recipes that make fish meals accessible and affordable without compromising on the environment. Mumsnetters have already been great getting behind our twice-a-week challenge to see how easy it can be to meet government health recommendations to eat fish twice a week."

They'd now like to know from you your best ideas for quick and healthy midweek fish suppers - what is your favourite recipe for the family? Do you have any 'cheat methods' you can share with others for fish dishes, what fishy meals would you serve up if short of time? Also how do you encourage your children to eat fish? Or to eat fish more often? Do your children love or loath fish? Do they need to be coated in breadcrumbs or are they willing to try anything?

If you've recently tried one of the Young's range with your family - do let us know what you think.

Do share your tips, recipes and experiences on this thread - everyone who contributes will be entered into a prize draw where TWO winners will each get a copy of Jamie's Great Britain Cook Book (RRP £30) and £30 of vouchers for Young's Seafood (which can be spent in any major supermarket)

thanks. MNHQ

[choccyp1g]

My favourite fish dish is what we call "white fish with sauce".
Basically you cook any whitish fish and some veg and mashed potatos. Make loads of cheese sauce and put in a jug. It is fish pie really, but the trick for fussy children is that they choose WHERE the sauce goes.
The trick for me, is that I make enough cheese sauce for three meals, and freese it in microwaveable pots. I defrost the sauce in the microwave and it seems to taste just the same.
Sometimes I freeze the mashed potatoes as well and defrost in the microwave; they don't come out quite as nice as fresh, but combined with lots of cheese sauce they are OK.

[jicky]

Our favourite fish dish is kedgeree. Poach mixture of smoked and unsmoked fish in water and splash of Pernod, use fish water to cook rice (basmati and wild rice is nice) with pinch of turmeric and bung in some frozen peas at end of cooking time. Fry onion with curry powder. flake fish and add to rice with onion. Serve with sliced hard boiled eggs and ketchup. If you make lots it can be microwaved and reheated (ds2 likes it for breakfast)

Lightly smoked salmon as tempanyaki with noddles and cucumber salad is also very popular, or having it as part of a raclette. We often do raclette when have lots of visiting children as they can usually find something they like to eat.

The dc also like tempura prawns and fish - I use rice flour as one can't have wheat, and make with chilled badoit water for light batter. This one is me being indulgent as it takes time to fry, so more weekend than mid week.

Youngs gluten free fish fingers are very good for speedy meals - but not widely stocked.

Best way to get my dc to eat fish and shellfish is to let them pick the fish. Ds2 selects odd shell fish in the market, ds3 likes to buy whole fish and watch me gut it. We have offered them money on holiday in France to try oysters. They all ate one, got their euro, but didn't want more.

[iseenodust]

Quick and cheap fishy meals that DS 7 will eat:
Tinned mackerel (pref in tomato or curry sauce) on plain boiled rice with cucumber, tomato and raw carrot.
Tin of Heinz spicy tomato & rice soup - chuck in at last minute packet of mussels (£1.25 in Tesco), serve with crusty bread.
Also likes trout just grilled served with brown bread & butter.

Any fish with new potatoes and veg or pesto pasta.
BBQ fish too!
Fav is Nigellas red thai prawn curry.

DS is a bit unusual in loving it all including squid. Always have fish fingers in stock though for when fridge empty or when other kids come for tea.

[ouryve]

Our favourite fish meal, that everyone will eat, is very lazy indeed, and usually all courtesy of M&S. We usually have "fish feet" on a Friday and it usually comes straight from the freezer, in anticipation of a shop for fresh stuff on Saturday morning.

And yes, "Fish Feet" is our name for frozen breaded fish. This is usually served with crinkly oven chips, frozen peas and/or sweetcorn, sometimes cherry tomatoes if we have some to use up and lots of vinegar and ketchup. Not sophisticated, but cheap, easy and delicious! (and a very quick cleanup, after dinner :o )

Other ways we get fish and seafood into our diets include tinned tuna in a tomatoey sauce with lots of peppers and occasionally courgettes, all served with pasta (we like ours perked up with chilli flakes, but DS1 doesn't like spice) and frozen prawns, which we keep on hand for stir fries, curries, boiled egg and prawn sarnies etc.

And of course, who can forget a lunchtime treat of a fish finger sandwich?

[JS06]

Salmon fillets on an oiled baking tray, salt and pepper, a spritz of olive oil, some orange zest on the top of each fillet and a splash of the fresh orange juice. Foil over top, in oven medium heat for 30 mins. Wonderfully easy and quick. Cook some new pots while fish in oven and serve with a dollop of mayo and a quick fridge drawer salad. Dinner. Done!

[Firawla]

we are not eating that much fish at the moment, although dc like to have fish fingers. used to buy a lot of salmon, but got out the habit of that (i think because it is so expensive!) but really quick was just put pesto on it, wrap in foil and shove in the oven - then either have it with potatos, peas etc or with pasta.

sometimes have fish curry too, i prefer prawns cos they are quite quick and easy but noone else in the house likes it

also used to eat the breaded or batter oven fish, with chips but i felt the quality of them went downhill a bit? so i have gone off them for the moment

tuna toastie or tuna pasta is the other quick one

[BIWItheBold]

Salmon steaks (4)

Marinate for 30 minutes with:

Crushed garlic, finely chopped ginger, juice of a lemon/lime, sesame oil, Chinese 5 spice powder, chilli flakes (optional), soy sauce

Wrap in foil/baking parchment and bake for 20 minutes in a hot oven.

Serve with noodles or rice and stir-fried vegetables.

[janthea]

Favourite seafood- mmmmm?
Goujons of plaice or sole with creamy mash or wedges!
Kedgeree made with smoked haddock (not dyed), lots of cream and butter, parsley, boiled egges and onions.
Tuna mashed with mayonnaise and served in a baked potato.
Grilled Kippers!
Smoked mackerel with salad
Very 70s prawn cocktail with chopped lettuce and loads of dressing sprinkled with cayenne pepper!
Quenelles of pike served with a prawn sauce!
Poached salmon mixed into couscous with tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, spring onions and tossed with french dressing or cesaer dressing - yum!

[ThereGoesTheYear]

Any kind of fish is a big hit with my DC. Pirate food, innit?

Quick dinner: pasta with smoked fish and broccoli.
Cook & drain linguini
Steam broccoli and add to pasta
Tear/flake and toss in smoked salmon/mackerel (salmon pales in the heat)
You can add olive oil or crime fraiche and a bit of lemon juice too.

Cheap dinner if you buy smoked salmon trimmings.

[gazzalw]

Tuna and sweetcorn pasta is a stalwart and only takes about ten minutes to make!

But our DCs are really keen on moules in either a white wine or a garlic sauce! Seriously! Served with frites and petits pois and some baguette to authenticate the experience! That is guaranteed to have the DCs tucking in and really excited about a meal time!

Poached salmon with new potatoes and broccoli is another winner in this house.

DS is not keen on 'mixed' up food so simple dishes suit him best. DD and we love a slightly bastardised bouillabaisse (sic?) but a bit fiddly during the week.

DW recently bought some of the Youngs Gastro Range fish varieties - we particularly loved the fish in the seedy batter - yummmy indeed and felt very home-made. It seemed really light and healthy too. What's more to enjoy without the hassle of having to prepare oneself?

[emcwill74]

OK, best way to get fish into kids (pretty much the only way for boy who claims to hate fish): make a cheese sauce, boil pasta, cook some salmon fillet in microwave, microwave some peas and/or sweetcorn, mix it all up, provide seconds and thirds to adoring children.

Best way to serve fish as far as I'm concerned if not just for kids: Boil potatoes (for mash so peel if desired but I don't bother because I'm lazy healthy) till cooked and drain. Whilst boiling, poach some white fish in milk just to cover, remove and reserve milk. Cook some salmon fillet in microwave. Make cheese sauce (melt 25g butter in pan, add 25g plain flour to make roux, add reserved milk from poaching slowly, stirring all the time, add more milk if needed, take off heat and add 75g grated mature cheese plus 1/2 tsp mustard). Thaw some fr. peas/sweetcorn/both in microwave. Break up fish (removing any bones) and add to veg and cheese sauce in a pyrex bowl, mix it up. Make mash with the potatoes, adding in some butter and milk. Top fishy sauce with mash. Grate cheese on top. Cook till cheese is nice and brown. Serve with peas or salad and some good bread for moppage.

Yum. Yum. YUM.

[emcwill74]

Ooooh thought of another child-friendly and super-quick'n'easy salmon recipe! Mix up 3tbsp soy sauce and 3 tbsp honey. Add in a squeeze of lime if you have one, not the end of the world of not. Marinate salmon fillets if you have time/are organised, if not just dunk the fillets in and swoosh round a bit. Add fillets to a frying pan (with no oil/fat) and pour over remaining soy-honey mix. Cook salmon like this on hob, turning occasionally. It won't take long, afe wmins either side, the mixture will bubble up and go sticky, keep spooning over the salmon to cook it. Serve salmon perched atop noodles (4 minutes in pan) and maybe some mange-tout and/or baby corn (a couple of minutes in micro). Prepare for family to think you are an insanely talented chef with ability to produce meals in no time as everyone LOVES it.

[Kveta]

we don't eat much fish, as DH is from a landlocked country where the only fish on offer seems to be carp (FFS), so he is deeply suspicious of anything that isn't carp. He absolutely refuses to eat any shellfish, or sea fish that isn't breadcrumbed. trout is just about acceptable apparently.

So my tip to get children to eat more fish would be: don't have children with a picky man...

DS loves fishfingers (we've tried the Jamie Oliver range, and he likes them, so will probably have them again) and I do throw a tin of tuna into macaroni cheese now and again, so we get some fish in our diets. Other than that, if I want fish, it has to be at restaurants or when DH is home late!

oh, and DS is 2.7 and picky about his food - some days he'll eat everything, other days nothing. there is no rhyme or reason to it, so I'm hoping when he and his sibling are older, and easier to reason with, we can eat fish a bit more often!

[carabos]

Everyone in our house will eat a salmon fillet - usually steamed with a sprig of dill and a knob of butter, green veg and potatoes.

A big favourite is haddock fillets roasted with a generous smear of pesto along the top, a ton of roasted cherry tomatoes, sprig of basil, bit of butter / olive oil (makes a nice sauce with the juice that runs out of the pricked toms). Serve with spinach, peas and broccoli.

[CMOTDibbler]

DS(5)'s favourite seafood dish is calamari, crabclaws, or tuna sushi rolls. Which I don't do at home obv. Although a popular picnic item here is Nori rolls - tinned tuna, or crabstick with avocado or cucumber are actually v easy and quick to make.
Our best fish quick dish uses salmon flakes and prawns, creme fraiche, peas and chives. Warms through in 3 minutes, and serve with fresh pasta or rice noodles, so dinner is done in 5 mins tops

[Snugglebuttmini]

We regularly have fish. Salmon and gnocchi bake is our fav - it's different to the traditional cod and chips/fish and potato. Rich tomato taste and we love it with leeks thown in too and with some fresh warm ciabbatta or salad.

Delicious! x

[annec123]

I like Salmon fillet baked with mixed herbs and butter and served with chips and sweetcorn. I really love the Youngs battered haddock fillets.

[HannahLI]

We regularly have fish, I tend to buy it fresh from the fish counter and usually just cook it on the griddle pan or frying pan and serve it with home made potato wedges or home made oven chips with some stir fry type veg. My little boy scoffs it usually! We actually find that whether it's fish or chicken if it comes in batter he won't touch it unless we pull the fish out the middle for him.
I tend to buy sole fresh as its quite a light and delicate flavor rather than some fish which can be quite off putting if its strong. Sole usually doesn't take long at all in the pan in you buy he fillet then you don't have to faff wih it too much.
We also eat canned tuna usually with pasta or jacket potatoes which always goes down well too! I also add tuna to a pasta bake along with veg which is quick to prepare and easy to do.

[OhNoNotTheHoneyBabies]

We love fish in our house and have it 2 or 3 times a week. A really simple way of getting healthy omega oils into your kids is to make good old sardines on toast! Nothing simpler than mashing up tinned sardines in olive oil, spreading them on bread and toasting them under the grill. My 3 year old loves this for tea. He also loves tinned mackerel in tomato sauce on toast. Cutting it up into fingers makes it a great finger food for toddlers.

Putting some smoked fish in a quiche is also a fab way of getting kids to eat fish.

[artifarti]

Fishcakes always a favourite here. A tin of salmon, mashed up and mixed with a couple of boiled and mashed sweet potatoes and then throw in whatever is lurking in the fridge e.g. some thai curry sauce and coriander or chopped up gherkins/capers/olives or just lots of mixed herbs and salt and pepper. Then shape into four fishcakes (for adults) or 6-8 (for children) and coat in seasoned plain flour, then dip in egg, then coat in breadcrumbs (e.g. manky crusts whizzed up in a blender). Then stick in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Yum.

[newlark]

We've been eating loads more fish since being lucky enough to take part in the Youngs twice a week challenge - particularly the Gastro range.

A child friendly favourite here is kedgeree made with the Youngs easy cook smoked fish pieces: poach the fish pieces gently in some milk for a few mins, meanwhile fry half a finely chopped onion in a little oil in a separate pan. Add rice and a little turmeric and cumin to the pan with the onions and add the milk topped up with some boiling water & a stock cube. Simmer until the rice is nearly done then stir in the fish pieces. I sometimes add some frozen peas 5 mins before the end. Garnish with wedges of boiled egg. Lovely with mango chutney on the side :)

[daimbardiva]

I make fish pie - usually with haddock in a creamy, tarragon and lemon-infused white sauce and use puff pastry instead of potato, and everyone loves that.

Even when my kids were babies they loved "cheesy fish" - mashed potato with cheese and fish mashed through it.

Tonight we had megrim sole shallow fried in a crispy white breadcrumb coating - delicious!

We often have thai green curry using frozen raw king prawns, and frozen scampi and chips is another favourite.

[Blatherskite]

I've been lucky in that DS loves fish in all it's forms and will eat haddock, prawns, squid, all white fish, seafood sticks - his favourite meal ever is Salmon...but DD is much more picky and it's a struggle to get her to eat any at all.

She loves pasta so we sometimes mix tinned fish in a tomato sauce through hot pasta which she will sometimes eat and creamy fish pie is usually a winner too. We make a Kedgeree too but our recipe doesn't include any curry powder or turmeric so I'm not sure how traditional it is. It's just rice cooked in vegetable stock stirred through fried shallots with flakes smoked haddock and cooked, peeled prawns. We serve it with finely chopped parsley, quartered boiled eggs and lemon wedges.

DS's favourite way with salmon is to have it 'en papillote'. I make a bed of cooked cous cous on a piece of greaseproof paper, top with some veg - usually asparagus or tenderstem broccoli with cherry tomatoes, then place the salmon fillets on top and seal the parcel up. After 20 minutes in the oven it's all cooked and the children thinking eating it straight out of the paper is lots of fun :)

[zipzap]

We're not big fish fans here although we do try to eat it at least once a week to be healthy... probably our least favourite meal of the week though.

We usually end up having salmon as that's the only fish I like (although dh also likes cod - preferably battered and with chips - so he does get that occasionally and I get something completely different for me)

I just do it in the microwave - 2 decent sized fillets take 3.5 - 4 minutes on medium in my microwave. I've got a little pot thing specifically for cooking fish in the m/w, so the juice drains off and it's all covered.

I usually just cook it with a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash or 3 of angostura bitters to give it a bit of moisture. Then serve with some hollandaise sauce.

If it's summer I'll serve it with new potatoes (5 mins to cook enough for the 2 of us in the m/w) and a tossed salad, so the whole thing is a very quick meal. Or if I have nice fresh bread and am feeling lazy in a hurry, then I'll have it with salad and fresh bread.

If it's winter then still serve with potatoes but with veg instead of salad.

Before having ds2 I used to eat smoked salmon as well but I don't tend to eat it much any more.

However, it did make for easy and quick meals. One of my favourites was to cook some pasta, drain it and then stir in some roughly chopped smoked salmon, a splosh of cream (or plain yoghurt or creme fraiche or philadelphia-type cream cheese - I always keep a couple of those little individual pots in the fridge for just such occasions), a splosh of vodka/sherry/angostura bitters (assuming the dc aren't having any as they are still little!) or lemon/lime/orange juice. If I had any around, I'd also add some fresh herbs chopped quite finely (dill, basil or parsley worked well) or chopped capers or olives, roughly chopped spring onions, shallots, baby plum tomatoes, spinach leaves, chicory, etc - you get the picture, it's very versatile, most things that go nicely with smoked salmon can be thrown in, depending on what you have in the fridge.

You can also a spoonful or two of the dill mustard that you would normally have with gravadlax to give it another dimension.

If you use fresh pasta, it can all be on the table in 5 minutes, while the pasta is cooking you can chop up the bits you want in the sauce. Throw them in once the pasta is drained and by the time you've stirred it all together it is all warm enough.

Oh and it's a good idea to keep a little bit of the pasta water back when you drain it - you can add it to the sauce to thin it down a bit without it tasting watery or going all thin, helps it to coat the pasta really well without adding loads of creamy calories or sacrificing taste!

[ICutMyFootOnOccamsRazor]

My DCs looove seafood pie, and when I cook it I always make enough for 2 and freeze one for a quick supper another night. I alos hide veg in it by making the mash on top a mix of potato and carrot or beetroot and by putting spinach and peas, broccoli or asparagus inside it.

In fact, I'm lucky that fish is one of their favourite things, and they're perfectly happy with a fillet of plaice or flounder roasted or pan-fried with garlic.

Another one that's a favourite for a quick supper is to stick a couple of salmon fillets in a ziplock bag in the morning, pour over teryaki sauce and leave it in the fridge for the day. It's super-fast to cook and serve up with some rice noodles and stir-fried greens.