![Reeling In The Fish Cookbooks [A Deep Dive] 1](https://kitchenauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/KA-Featured-Images-2023.jpg "Reeling In The Fish Cookbooks [A Deep Dive] 1")
For home cooks looking to expand their seafood repertoire, fish cookbooks are a good first place to start.
They typically include a wide variety of recipes, from simple weeknight meals to more elaborate dishes for special occasions.
Many fish cookbooks also include information on selecting and preparing fish, as well as tips and techniques for cooking it to perfection.
When it comes to selecting fish, it is important to choose high-quality, fresh fish.
Look for bright eyes, red gills, and a shiny, metallic appearance. Avoid fish that has a strong odor or appears slimy. Once you have selected your fish, it is important to prepare it properly. This can include cleaning and filleting, as well as removing any bones.
Cooking techniques are also essential when it comes to fish dishes. Different types of fish, such as salmon or tilapia, may require different methods, such as grilling or baking. Additionally, ingredients such as herbs, spices, and marinades can add flavor and depth to your fish dishes.
Whether you’re a seasoned seafood cook or just starting out, a fish cookbook is a valuable addition to any kitchen library. With the right resources, you can easily create delicious, healthy, and satisfying fish dishes.
Before you start working through the fish cookbooks in this list, you should ensure you have a good knife set and some decent spatulas. It will make cooking fish and shellfish so much easier.
So, go ahead and reel in the cookbooks, and start exploring the world of fish dishes.
Simply Fish
75 Modern and Delicious Recipes for Sustainable Seafood by Matthew Dolan
This class fish cookbook is one of our all-time favorites. It’s short enough that you won’t get overwhelmed but long enough to give you plenty of choice for your table too.
It’s also one of the only fish cookbooks to go into the level of detail that it does about preparing and cooking fish.
Roy’s Fish and Seafood
Recipes from the Pacific Rim by Roy Yamaguchi
Hawaii’s Roy Yamaguchi has cooked a lot of fish in his career and this seafood cookbook distills his knowledge into around 100 recipes that use seafood from both Hawaii and around the world to create incredible dishes.
We like that he touches on all the uses, flavors, and cooking qualities of each individual ingredient and how you can substitute one fish for another when needed.
Foolproof Fish
Modern Recipes for Everyone, Everywhere by America’s Test Kitchen
This is a 2021 IACP award winner for seafood cooking and it’s stacked with 198 recipes for all types of fish and seafood dishes.
It’s a complete guide to taking on seafood in your kitchen and whether you want to tackle sea bass, shrimp, cod, salmon, or chowder, they’ve got you covered.
This may be one of the most essential fish cookbooks of all time.
The Whole Fish Cookbook
New Ways to Cook, Eat, and Think by Josh Niland
This book, published in 2019, was a major award winner claiming two James Beard prizes as well as many others.
The photography also won awards and the book is filled with stunning images of healthy fresh classic fish dishes.
Josh tackles how we eat from end to end from sourcing our food to butchering it to cooking it, making soups, etc., and then how to preserve it for eating later too in terms of smoking and curing.
The Fishmonger’s Apprentice
The Expert’s Guide to Selecting, Preparing, and Cooking a World of Seafood, Taught by the Masters by Aliza Green
An ocean’s worth of advice lies in the pages of this book. It’s a complete guide to doing everything with fish in the kitchen.
We love the step-by-step imagery that shows you how to do things like fileting, skinning, boning, etc. There are also a collection of online videos to accompany this to make following the instructions in the book even easier.
Fish & Shellfish by Rick Stein
We suspect Rick Stein lives solely on a diet comprising of seafood but that’s fine because his food is amazing and so is this book.
The quintessential chef is passionate about local ingredients and you may find it challenging to source some of the items that appear in this book but we would recommend you give it a go because the recipes are unforgettable in all the right ways.
Rick also appears in the list of our favorite cookbook authors.
Fresh Fish
A Fearless Guide to Grilling, Shucking, Searing, Poaching, and Roasting Seafood by Jennifer Trainer Thompson
Our favorite clam chowder comes from the recipes in this book and Jennifer will soon have you buying fish (even whole ones) with confidence and then turning them into amazing meals in your own kitchen.
The recipes here are beautifully illustrated and super easy to follow.
Good Fish
100 Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast by Becky Selengut
As the title suggests, the recipes in this book are very concerned with the sustainability of the fish stocks that you use to cook with.
This is a good thing and if you’re near the Pacific Coast, this may be the best cookbook you’re ever going to buy.
Cooking with Tinned Fish
Tasty Meals with Sustainable Seafood by Bart Van Olphen
Don’t write off tinned fish! Not only is it often lower cost than fresh fish but it can be every bit as good when you know how to cook it properly.
From the pantry to the pan, Bart has you covered.
Lake Fish
Modern Cooking with Freshwater Fish by Keane Amdahl
This collection of Mid-Western lake fish recipes is amazing and we wish we lived closer to Lake Superior because then we’d cook these every day.
Keane’s ability to experiment with fish and inspire others to do the same means that the utility of this work stretches a long way from the shores of the Great Lakes too.