Fish with Lemon Butter Sauce

This fish with lemon-butter sauce is a weeknight dinner main you can make in just 15 minutes. I love pairing the fish with these lemon-garlic butter baby potatoes, as you’ll see in the photos below. If you want to add some greens, you can also try some roasted broccolini.

What You’ll Need

To make the fish with lemon butter sauce, you’ll need the following ingredients:

• Fish Fillets – 4 white fish fillets (about 4-5 oz each fillet/110-140 grams each). I used basa fish fillets for the recipe & photos, but other white fish fillets like tilapia, sea bass, and catfish also work well.
• Olive Oil – 2 tbsp olive oil
• Salt – a pinch of fine salt
• Pepper – a pinch of ground black pepper
• Garlic – 1 large garlic clove, crushed
• Butter – 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• Shallot – 1 shallot, minced
• Capers – 2 tbsp capers, drained
• Lemon – zest from one lemon and 3 tbsp lemon juice
• Dill – finely minced fresh dill, about 1 tbsp when minced

Note before you get started: If you decide to serve the fish with a side of these baby potatoes, start cooking the potatoes first, as the recipe will take about 30-35 minutes. The fish recipe itself takes less than 15 minutes.

Step 2. Cook the fish. Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. If the pan is not big enough for 4 fish fillets, cook them in batches (two at a time).

Add the oil (1 tbsp if cooking only 2 fillets at a time, or 2 tbsp of oil if cooking 4 fillets at the same time). Once the oil is shimmering, lay the fish fillets in the pan (laying them away from you so that the oil doesn’t splash). Cook the fish for 3-4 min on the first side, then flip it gently. Add the crushed garlic clove, and continue cooking the fish for another 3-4 minutes until it’s fully cooked (when it’s opaque and flakes easily or registers an internal temperature of 145°F/63°C). Remove the fish to a hot plate and discard the garlic clove.

Step 3. Make the sauce. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and add the lemon juice, lemon zest, and minced shallot. Deglaze the pan with the lemon juice while cooking the shallot. Cook until the minced shallot has softened, about 2 minutes (more or less depending on how small you minced the shallot). Turn the heat down to low, and add the capers and the butter, 1 tbsp of butter at a time, mixing with a heatproof spatula (only adding the next bit of butter once the previous one has melted). Take off the heat and add the minced fresh dill.

Step 4. Serve. Spoon the sauce over the fish and serve.