We made these Mediterranean fish bowls with fried Branzino fillets, salad and tzatziki sauce this summer and somehow forgot to post the recipe. But procrastination can’t stop us! The pan-fried Branzino is here, and it would be great for dinner and you can meal prep it for the week, too. Just pack into airtight containers, and heat it up for a few minutes in the oven before serving with the salad and tzatziki.

This is one of the recipes we pretty much grew up with. Our family loved having fried white fish like Branzino with salad (usually tomatoes and cucumbers), bread (we miss you), and of course – garlic sauce or tzatziki! You always need the bread, especially when you didn’t catch the fish in the grocery store and don’t know how to turn it into fish fillets without bones. Our grandpa always said – chew thinly. Not many people like a fish bone stuck to the back of their throat. Who knew. A piece of bread to the rescue – the soft part should fix it.

On a more positive note, another favorite way to serve fried fish was with mashed potatoes and tzatziki…it’s SO good.

Now that we're older, wiser and more gluten-intolerant, we used gluten-free ground oats for the coating of the Branzino fillets. You can use oat flour or regular flour as well, the important thing is to rub the fish with salt before coating with the flour. Sometimes we just mix the flour with salt on the plate and then coat the fish in that. We can’t seem to measure salt in anything other than pinches, we appologize – you need around 3!

If you want you can mix in pepper, paprika or other spices into the flour, to make the fish spicy. We like ours only with salt – like you’d usually have fried fish in Greece or Italy.

Here’s the recipe, we'll add some step-by-step photos for the fried Branzino below:

Pat dry the fish fillets and season with salt, rubbing along the fish. Add the ground oats (or flour) to a larger plate that would fit the fillets. Then roll the Branzino fillets in the flour to coat them properly.

spread the flour aka coating mixture coating the branzino

place fillets coating the branzino

flip to coat evenly and shake off excess flour

Tap the fillets to shake off excess flour

Fry for 3-4 minutes on each side or until golden brown

Serve with salad and tzatziki

Yield: 3
Prep: 15 minutes
Cook: 15 minutes
Total: 30 minutes

Ingredients

Fried Branzino

14oz/400g branzino fillets
1/2 cup ground oats
3 good pinches or salt
olive oil for frying

Mediterranean Bean Salad*

1 tomato, chopped
3/4 cup white beans, cooked, no fluids
a good handful of basil leaves
1 Cucumber, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, thinly chopped
1 cup arugula, roughly chopped
1/2 avocado, chopped
1/2 onion, thinly chopped
1 tbsp capers, drained
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp olive oil, or to taste
1 tbsp lemon juice, or to taste

Tzatziki

1 cup Greek yogurt, (around 10% fat)
1 small cucumber (around 1/2 cup thinly chopped, washed, peeled if not organic**
1 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1-2 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
a pinch of salt

Method

Pat dry the fillets and season with salt, rubbing along the fish on each side. Add the ground oats (or flour) to a larger plate that would fit the fillets. Then roll the Branzino fillets in the flour to coat them properly. Tap fillets gently to shake off excess flour.
Heat oil in a pan (enough to properly cover the surface - around 2 tbsp), then add some fish - it should sizzle. Add the Branzino fillets to the pan and fry on each side for 3-4 minutes, flipping with a spatula - the fillets should be golden brown. Sometimes we like them really crispy and would let them fry a bit longer flipping twice.
For the salad, add all ingredients to a bowl and season with lemon juice, salt and pepper and mix. For the tzatziki, same instructions - add all ingredients to a smaller bowl and mix, adding salt and pepper.
Serve the seabass with salad and a dollop of tzatziki.