Family fish dinner ideas

[SweetPeaPods]

As a family we do not eat enough fish. One will eat tuna mayo and one will eat fish and chips! Please can you suggest some family friendly fish ideas I can try that all the family will hopefully eat. I’m thinking white fish, no salmon or sea food to begin with. As easy and failsafe for me as possible, it’s not going to be the cheapest dinner! TIA

A cheesy fish pie. The mash and cheese might lure them in

General rule to make sure novice fish eaters don’t have to try fish skin or heads, so I remove anything challenging like that once cooked. But buying fillets is so easy now.

I always used to like squeezing my lemon wedge onto fish as a child.

Bake some white fish fillets with cherry tomatoes and whatever veg they like, drizzled with a bit of oil and a good half lemon of juice.

Child-friendly kedgeree - I just did rice, poached some haddock for a few minutes in a mix of milk and water, hard boiled one egg per person, sliced some tomatoes and added a handful of chopped parsley. Mix it all together.

would they not like salmon pasta? Just bake it or even easier microwave it for 2.5 minutes, take off the skin and mix it with the pasta?

Good food have a great recipe for basa in a garlic and paprika butter. I made it this week, quick and easy and very tasty.

Fish burger or fish taco

Sauté some halved cherry tomatoes, add paprika, garlic, salt & pepper, red pepper and a tin of butter beans. I then stir in some frozen spinach and put frozen white fish fillets on top, put a lid on the pan and poach/steam the fish for about 25 mins. Serve with new potatoes - always a winner here.

creamy fish pie.

tuna pasta bake.

salmon fillets bakes in foil with lemon juice & slices, serve with roasted veg & cous cous.

The white fish fillets from Lidl (frozen) are cheap. They are delicious in a mild curry eg a korma (add chilli afterwards if anyone prefers more kick). Make the curry sauce first, stir in spinach then place the still frozen fillets into the sauce and cook for 5-10 minutes until cooked through, add coriander and serve with rice and chapattis which are great to make with kids, get them to roll them out, makes them excited to et them.

you can use the fillets in fajitas but again you need to get the veg almost cooked first add the fillets until nearly cooked then add the spices. Kids tend to be keener to eat “fun” meals eg picking things up! Another super simple meal is fish burgers, you’ll need defrosted fillets, jar of pesto and buns literally just fry one side, carefully flip and top with pesto, once basically cooked flip again to cook the pesto for a minute, you can use the same principal for favourite flavours eg Cajun works well.

i love fish tasting just of fish but these my work for reluctant fish eaters

Fried fish cakes with bread and butter! Loads of tomato ketchup. Delicious gateway food to proper fish recipes.

A family favourite in our house is yellow-smoked basa, with a poached egg on top (the yolk must be runny!), served with either toasted sourdough bread or potato waffles or mash. I cook the basa by poaching it very gently submerged in milk. I use that milk to make fish pie the next day (see below). Basa is very cheap compared to most fish. A pack of two fillets serves two people who like fish. You might at first just serve the kids half a piece and an extra egg. In the old days we would have eaten smoked haddock but it’s very expensive now. It sounds weird but it is worth trying if your kids eat eggs as it is like no other fish meal I can think of. Mine adore it!

Fish pie is a crazy expensive thing to make these days. I look out for a pack of salmon on yellow-sticker and freeze itz. I use white and smoked basa to pad it out. Don’t put prawns in. Follow a recipe but make sure to use the smoky milk from poaching the basa - it makes the white sauce taste amazing and more fishy so if you cannot afford a lot of fish it’s less noticeable. I stir in a lot of frozen peas too. Make my own mash. It is a faff, and I only do this on a weekend as it’s harder work than making a roast! Some people enjoy adding boiled eggs in their fish pie too. Serve with sweetcorn or more peas.

Finally in summer I recommend hake. Please don’t buy it after end of September - it shouldn’t be fished in the winter. It’s a firm and quite mild fish and you can cook it with chorizo in a kind of casserole. Lots of lovely recip s online. My kids were suspicious at first but have learned to like it.

I have a teen with loads of SEN related food issues. But he adores calamari. I get squid, cut one side in a cross pattern and dust with seasoned flour then fry.

I also make my own fake filet of fish burgers by breading my own fillets.

those dishes acted as a gateway and now I can just have poached or pan fried white fish fillets which they will eat with lemon butter.

Fantastic ideas thank you. The bass in garlic and paprika sounds great and the butter bean recipe too thank you!!
agree with the fish pie being expensive, it used to be a weaning favourite but I couldn’t believe how much even fish pie mix is atm so bass is a great shout thanks!

Cod wrapped in pancetta goes down well here.
All kinds of fishcakes, the current favourite being tuna, sweet photo and chilli.