Fish tacos are not a new thing.
I’ve seen them on menus for probably 15 years or so – and that’s just when I first became aware there was such a thing.
For 14 of those years, my response was always a wrinkled nose and a muttered “yuck.”
Tacos are among my all-time favorite foods. Beef tacos. With hamburger. BEEF. Not fish.
And, while I like fish – love it, even – I could never imagine combining fish with tacos. No way.
Then my husband and I went to a restaurant for some sort of special occasion. I think it was for the anniversary of the day we first kissed – the only anniversary (besides our wedding anniversary) that he agrees is worthy of celebrating. We’ve been going out for a fancy dinner in honor of that day for years now. So last fall, we celebrated our eighth anniversary (EIGHT. Holy freaking moly.) of togetherness and went to a restaurant on the lake. [EDITED TO ADD: My husband maintains that this dinner was for our first wedding anniversary. He has a good memory, I do not. So wedding anniversary it is!]
I remember three things about that dinner:
1. We got spectacular views of the lake, as this restaurant literally juts out OVER the water, and I spent many minutes imagining what would happen should an earthquake occur just then and the restaurant crack in half and dump us all in the icy depths of Lake Erie.
2. There was something wonky in the kitchen so that we waited about 45 minutes for our appetizer and then our salad came WHILE we were eating our appetizer and then our main course came WHILE we were trying to get through the salad, which meant that I was too stuffed to enjoy my filet. FAIL.
3. The appetizers. They were fish tacos. Teeny tiny crispy fish tacos with itty bitty toppings (including tomatoes, which I’d asked them to omit from our order. DOUBLE FAIL.) and some sort of amazing delicious avocado-y sauce. I could have eaten ten thousand of those little tacos. My mouth is filling up with saliva just thinking about it, and believe me, I hate the word “saliva” almost as much as I hate the IDEA of saliva, so I must really have loved those tacos.
Anyway. After that dinner, there was no going back. I was a fish taco convert. Whenever I saw them on a menu (which was pretty infrequently, although I did have them TWICE on my Super Fun Two-Week Vacation – once in Palm Springs, and once in Montana, which was WEIRD. Not the tacos – they weren’t super, but they were normal – but the fact that a restaurant in Montana would have them. It’s not the most Mexican place, Montana.), I had to try them.
And then Kate at Our Best Bites posted a recipe for “Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette + Grilled Fish Tacos” and I started plotting the day when I would make my own fish taco deliciousness.
We made them on Memorial Day, per Kate’s instructions. (Wait – she didn’t instruct readers to make them on Memorial Day. We just made them according to her instructions.) And while they weren’t as good as my memory of those appetizer tacos (and really, it’s hard to live up to a memory), they were fantastic. [EDITED TO ADD: Someone who shall remain nameless mentioned that he read so far as to see my insult Kate’s recipe. Which was totally not my intention! Hence the phrase “they were fantastic.” The tortillas were probably the reason that these tacos weren’t QUITE as amazingly wonderful as the restaurant tacos. Also, the cabbage. But neither of those things are Kate’s fault! Please don’t hate me Kate! I love this recipe!]
These tacos had a wonderful interplay of textures – the flaky tilapia and the creamy guacamole and the crisp cabbage and the crunchy tortilla – and flavors – the mild fish against the bite of the jalapenos and the sweet tang of the dressing. Plus, it just tasted fresh and summery and delicious.
My husband commented that they were good enough to be eaten in a restaurant, which is massively high praise. I’ve never heard him say anything like that about the food we make – even the meals we could eat every day for a month.
Without further ado…
Pan-Fried Tilapia Tacos with Kate’s Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette
First, the dressing.
Assemble your ingredients. Vegetable oil (although Kate suggests canola oil), limes, white wine vinegar, garlic, cilantro, sugar, and salt.
Step 1: Add ¼ cup lime juice, ¼ cup white wine vinegar, 4-5 cloves of garlic, ½ teaspoon salt, and 2 teaspoons sugar to a blender and blend until all the ingredients are combined. If you feel like throwing in 10 cloves of garlic instead of 4-5, go for it. Whomever you are eating with will also have dragon breath, so why not?
Step 2: Add one cup of canola or vegetable oil to the blender while it’s running. Do not listen to your husband if he suggests using half vegetable oil and half olive oil. Even if he comes up with a convincing argument about how olive oil is better for you and enhances things’ flavors and yada yada yada. Because then you will taste ONLY olive oil in the dressing, despite your husband’s protests that he can only taste cilantro. Perhaps you are imagining it or perhaps you have been completely scarred by that one time you accidentally used olive oil while making sugar cookies and they tasted like crumbly, greasy, olive oil cookies instead.
Step 3: Add ½ cup of roughly chopped cilantro leaves (no stems, please!) to the blender, blending until you have a thick, creamy, green mixture. I forgot to take a photo of this step, so you get a picture of cilantro instead.
Step 4: Add Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette to a bottle. Like so. Make sure you taste a few drops/spoonsful, “conversing” all the while about whether it has a potent olive oil flavor.
Now for the tacos themselves…
Assemble your ingredients. You’ll need mild white fish, guacamole, olive oil, tortillas, shredded lettuce or cabbage, and crumbly white cheese like cotilla or feta. If you like tomatoes, you’ll need those too. I won’t judge.
Step 1: Put some fishies on a plate. We used tilapia because it is cheap. Also, it has good flaky texture and the magical ability to take on the flavor of whatever you put on it. Yum. But you can use any kind of mild white fish your heart desires – like cod, red snapper, or mahi mahi. Or you can go hog wild and use shrimp or scallops. Salt and pepper your fishies on both sides. Slather them with a healthy coating of the Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette.
Step 2: Cook your fishies. You can grill them if you are lucky enough to have a grill. Or you can pan fry them, which is what we did. Cook them for 8-12 minutes or until you can flake them with a fork. I apologize for not having a photo of our cooked fish, because it was beautifully browned. But we were too anxious to get to the eating.
Step 3: Whilst the fishies are cooking, line a cookie sheet with foil. Brush your tortillas (we used corn ones) lightly with olive oil. Argue with your spouse over exactly how much olive oil is too much.
Step 4: Put the tortillas on the cookie sheet and shove them into an oven at some heat that you don’t remember. Possibly 425, because that is the temperature at which you bake pretty much everything.
Step 5: Remove the tortillas after a couple of minutes and realize you overcooked them and there is no way they will fold into a taco shape. Repeat step 3.
Step 6: Experiment with putting the tortillas between the slats of a cooling rack, trying to force them into taco shape. Watch them break under their own weight in the oven.
Step 7: Determine that no matter how you cook the tortillas, they are not going to adhere to taco shape. Resign yourself to eating them like little pizzas.
Step 8: Slather the flat tortillas with homemade guacamole while your husband flakes the fish into small and manageable pieces. (By the way, I made this guac for a July Fourth barbecue this weekend and it was gobbled up in short order. Guacamole FTW!) Make sure you taste the guacamole on a chip or seven to ensure that it’s good enough for the tacos.
Step 9: Add the fish to the guac-clad tortillas. Top with shredded cabbage, cotilla cheese (although feta cheese will do in a pinch), hot sauce, and a generous drizzling of Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette.
Step 10: Annoy your husband by insisting on photographing the tacos before you eat them. Ignore his protests that Kate has already photographed the whole process and that your readers can simply go to her blog to see it.
Step 11: Indulge in food ecstasy.
Ooh, those look delicious! I love fish tacos, too!
Oh, and you’ve been tagged 🙂 Stop by my site to check it out!
Of course, totally healthy! They look great, I’ll definitely be trying these soon. Thanks!
Yay!!! I’m so glad I made you into a believer! 🙂
Or at least HELPED make you a believer, I should say!
I, too, never went NEAR fish tacos until this past year. I love me some Mexican, but I never EVER thought it would be possible for me to put aside my beef/chicken tacos for fish. nope, never.
Now? I love them. Granted, I still love a beef taco with all my heart but now the fish is sloowly movin’ in.
Thanks for this new recipe! I’m going to have to try it out!
Well obvs no one in this household is giving up beef tacos either! No way Jose!
I’ve always been wary of fish tacos. but everything on those looks so good, and fish just feels so perfectly light and lovely for summer, I may have to give it a try.
Oh please do – they are better than anything you can imagine.
Oh I love mahi mahi tacos. However, I am very afraid at attempting to make them myself as I think I cannot cook fish haha.
Well, I’m not sure about mahi mahi, but tilapia is SO EASY to cook. You just throw it into a non-stick pan with a little olive oil and flip it back and forth until it’s nice and brown and crispy. It’s a VERY forgiving fish.
I have copied, and printed this entry with the determination to make these AMAZING sounding tacos this week.
YUM!
Ummm… I really don’t like fish… or seafood. Can I be exempt from this one? 😉
But I like your recipes – I always do the same thing, take pictures of like, half the prep, and then I get too hungry – or distracted… or my husband gets hungry and distracts me. Ha.
These look phenom. I am a huge fan of fish tacos. I went to San Diego for three days for work last year and I had fish tacos for four of my meals 🙂 Did you end up with a ton of dressing left over? It seems like a lot (of pure deliciousness).
Yes – there was a LOT of dressing left over. But we used it for everything… my husband replaced his mayonnaise on sandwiches… we used it as salad dressing… it’s good as a marinade for fish or probably chicken… I put it in black bean burritos. It’s delish.
But… you could probably get away with a third of the recipe.
YUM! Will have to try this. Also, congratulations on 8 years 🙂 That’s very sweet!
i LOVE fish tacos! A couple of months ago I ate some totally authentic ones in Mexico. Oh MAN my tastebuds are still reeling!
oxox
Denalee
PS – a blog award for you is going up right this second on my site 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe! I too am a convert to the fish taco – but my husband refuses to touch them. So, I’m going to make this recipe and call them something other than fish tacos 🙂 I’m sure he’s going to love them. But, I seriously have to come up with a different name…tilapia, vegetable crepe maybe? He loves crepes…
How about Summer Seafood Salad? Then you can throw in some tortillas or chips as “garnish.”
It’s so funny how a name can totally change your perception of a food! My mom says that when I was 8, I refused to eat at McDonald’s in London because they called hamburgers “beef burgers.” And hell if I was going to eat something called a “beef burger,” it was sure to be some sort of trickery!
Yum! Here in SC, we have a Mexican place that makes the best fish tacos I’ve ever eaten. I’m a convert after going there, too!
My husband loves fish tacos!! Thanks for listing the recipe. I will have to try this.
Hello. Love your blog. I found you through Denalee at Silver Strands. what a lovely lady she is.
I too was reluctant to try fish tacos, but when they are done well, they are amazing!
Congratulations on the eight year mark wow!!
I have been maried for a year and a half and that seems like an awful long to me already haha.
Let’s see, my hubsand and I hit our four year first kiss mark this month! How exciting, good for you and your husband for celebrating! Many happy years to you
xo
Jill
I LOVE fish tacos…but I’ve yet to make my own. Time to get on that!
I do love fish tacos. But I have never made them at home. In fact, even though I really enjoy fish, I can only think of twice I’ve ever cooked it myself. Mostly this is because my husband & children doesn’t like fish, and it seems like a waste to make something that 80% of the family won’t touch. Anyway….my point is that I think I might have to break from tradition and make these tacos. They look delicious. And your description of making the taco shells cracked me up!
Woah… those look great!!! I think I might try that recipe this weekend! I can’t believe there was a time in your life you hated Fish tacos?!?! They’re super yumbo!
If I wasn’t a vegetarian, I’d be making fish tacos right now. I love them, they’re fantastic. 🙂 Glad you’re a convert!
YUM I am so trying this. I know fish tacos have been around for awhile but don’t you feel like they just exploded all of a sudden? I feel like everybody is eating them and loving them. I have never had them before but I am excited to try!
holy deliciousness…I saw an old Alton brown Good Eats on tilipia tacos the other day and have been craving them since!
Got to this older post/recipe via today as I’m a more recent follower/lurker (circa late fall 2010).
The fist tacos look like something I would eat while vacationing somewhere warm, sunny and sandy (which, BTW, is nowhere in my future).
Tilapia, etc has been added to the grocery list and I think I’ll also paint my toes some outrageous color of pink and pretend its a least spring!
Love the read!
I just made these for dinner. They are awesome.