Fish Dish and Appetizer Recipes

[MuskieBait]

(01-08-2014 11:20 AM)MichaelAngelo Wrote:  I'm still partial to baking fish but can't figure out how to keep the meat from getting mushy. Last night I had some mushy whitefish (never frozen), but I think I overcooked it. Does lemon juice cause it to get mushy? Or is it simply from overcooking? My grandmother likes to prepare fish in a pan covered in foil, with green onions, lemon juice, olive oil, black pepper, and garlic.

When you bake in a pan covered with foil, it prevents moisture loss. It's not that the fish is "mushy"...that is the true moist nature of the flesh when cooked...just like if fish was steamed.

Other cooking methods like pan fry, grill, or smoke draw the moisture and fats out of the fish. The reduced moisture content makes the texture firmer...people calls it "tender"...for some fish, I call it "piece of crap" and "waste of good fish". People tends to grill or fry up grouper and it is a waste of good fish. I like my grouper steamed.

If you overcooked fish, you tend to firm up the meat as more moisture and fats are drawn out from excessive cooking time. It won't get more mushy.

Acid in lemon juice denatures protein, and that is actually how they prepare cerviche (with a mix of citrus juice), but it should firm up the texture. That chemical process is somewhat like cooking process. It should not turn the fish mushy but in fact firms it up. You need a lot of citrus juice to denature protein though...and by a lot I mean the fish has to be covered entirely in undiluted citrus juice. A squirt of lemon juice has little effect...even if you marinate overnight. But if you soak cubes of fish in citrus juice for cerviche, it can take anywhere from 1 hour to a few hours depending on how "cooked" you like your fish.

I wanted to make cerviche in Florida...but we never bought any limes and lemons...oh well...next time...I bet grunt cerviche would be pretty decent.