Fish on its own already tastes so good that you rarely need anything else to liven it up.
If you decide to jazz it up a bit be careful not to adulterate the delicate flavour by using overwhelming seasonings. Lemon butter sauce is a standard accompaniment served in South African fish restaurants, which brings out the full and vibrant flavour of fish and seafood. By simply adding some garlic there’s a whole new twist on things!
Pan-Fried Seabass with Garlic Lemon Butter Sauce and Spring Vegetables
Serves 4
Preparation: 5 mins – Cooking: 10 mins
Preparation: 5 mins – Cooking: 10 mins
Sea Bass
- 30ml (2 tbsp) butter
- 600g (1.3 lbs) sea bass fillets
- salt and freshly ground pepper
Method
- Melt the butter in a large frying pan. Fry sea bass, turning once halfway through cooking time. Cook until opaque and moist on the inside, 4 to 8 minutes.
Garlic Lemon Butter Sauce
- 4 cloves garlic, crushed
- 60g (2 oz) butter
- juice of 1 lemon
Method
- In a small saucepan, gently melt the butter. When it starts sizzling add the garlic and let it sizzle for a minute or two, allowing the garlic to infuse the butter. Lower the heat to the minimum setting, add the lemon juice, stir and let it heat through. Season to taste. Drizzle over the fish fillets when it is served.
Serving Suggestion
- You will notice there are other vegetables in the picture above. The new potatoes were boiled first and allowed to cool. It was then fried with some butter in a large frying pan until crisp. At the last minute the red pepper was
chuckedlovingly added in with the potatoes and flash fried for a few minutes. The asparagus was simply steamed.
Notes
- The sauce above is tailored to my taste. Feel free to play with the garlic, butter and lemon juice ratios until it suits you.
- The recipe for the sauce above only makes a small amount. Double the amount if you rave about sauces.
The potatoes and asparagus look great paired with this fish. All we need is a nice glass of wine.
I adore sea bass – yours looks so colourful and appealing!
Gorgeous presentation, love colourful dishes! The seabass looks amazing and the sauce sounds like the perfect complement for it. Thanks for sharing your dish with the Original Recipes Round-Up
The Duo Dishes: A glass of crisp, white wine went down nicely with this dish.
Jeanne: Me too! I love the soft texture. It’s just a shame that the fillets are so small these days due to overfishing.
Thanks, Lore! Always a pleasure to join your event.
searching for a sea bass recipe I found this ,and , at first was sceptical about the sauce that it may overwhelm the taste of the fish – but -I tried it and can say it wonderfully complimented the whole dish—-SUPERB can thoroughly recommend. Thank You
Thanks for the positive feedback, Bunney! Sometimes it is worth trying out recipes you are sceptical about because it might just surprise you.
I love sea bass but have never cooked fish before Iand couldn’t believe I could cook it myself as I had only ever eaten it in restuarants. But this recipe is so simple and easy to do and tasted wonderful. My husband now says that it’s his favourite thing that I cook for him and its certainly up there in my top three!
Great recipe – easy to follow and very tasty! I’ll definitely check out your other recipes. Thanks.
Hubby caught a monster sea bass today… so I was over the moon to find this recipe. A fantastic recipe – and one which I have just used. I also popped a small amount of fennel seeds into the sauce. Yummy!
Trying this one on my birthday on Wednesday. Hopefully it’ll be as nice as everyone else thinks
Hi,
I was wondering if the sebas would go with roasted tomatoes and green beans?
Thanks
Molly
Roasted tomatoes and green beans sound good to me – happy eating!
Absolutely beautiful I highly recommend it, I replaced the lemon with a lime(as I had none in) and I added a red chilli de-seeded and very finely chopped. It was delightful I will most definitely be making this again. Thanks for the recipe
The sauce did not turn out very good because the butter and garlic got burnt and it did not taste very good you should melt the butter on the lowest heat and maybe put some flour on the fish so it won’t burn.
I am very interested in making this dish, however, while reading over the recipe I couldn’t help but think that some chopped almond could be added somewhere in the mix. Michelle, how you you recommend adding some almonds without overwhelming the dish? Thank you for the recipe, great combinations.