Episode 005 Baked Parmesan Tilapia

Intro: Welcome to Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can get on the table any night of the week. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Hello. Hello. Let’s make some dinner. It’s about dinnertime and I am getting ready to put together dinner. I thought I would come on here and talk about what we are making tonight.

We are having Parmesan Tilapia. If you need a quick and easy dinner idea that doesn’t taste or feel quick and easy, this is it. It’s ready in 15 minutes from start to finish. I have some great side dish ideas that I’ll give you at the end that will also be ready in 15 minutes. 

Some of the ingredients that you’re going to want to make sure that you have on hand for this recipe are tilapia filets, fresh Parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, sour cream, softened butter, a lemon, capers, just some normal spices from your spice cabinet. There is one spice that you may not have, and that is dried dill weed. You’ll definitely want to grab that because the dill is perfect in that Parmesan sauce. If you like a little hot sauce, you can also make sure that you have some Tabasco or Chululo or whatever your favorite hot sauce is.

Tips and Tricks: Some equipment that you need to make sure you have to make this recipe is a rimmed baking sheet, foil, and then some kind of non-stick cooking spray. All right, let’s go over some tips for this recipe. Now, if you’re buying tilapia filets, you’ll want to buy something that is about six to eight ounces in size for each filet. When I buy my tilapia filets frozen, if I can remember, I will put them in the fridge the day before and let them thaw in there. But if you’re like me, you always forget about it. We need quick thaw methods over here at this house. For a quick thaw, what you want to do is fill up either a bowl or your sink with just room temperature water, keep that tilapia in its original packaging, and place it right down in that water. Leave it for about 10 to 15 minutes, then switch the water out again and let it sit in there for another 10 to 15 minutes, and it should be nice and thawed for you to use in this recipe. 

Another tip I have for you is the lemon. When you have a recipe that calls for the zest and the juice of a lemon, you always want to make sure that you zest first. Then cut it in half and squeeze the juice. 

Parmesan Tilapia Recipe: All right, let’s get started with this recipe. It actually comes together very quickly. So you want to do a few prep things before you actually start cooking your tilapia. The first thing is to preheat your oven broiler to 500 or 550 degrees and move that oven rack to one of the top two positions, so it’s anywhere from like six to 10 inches from that broiler heating element.

Next, you want to go ahead and mix up that Parmesan sauce that’s going to go on top of the tilapia. In a small bowl, you’re going to stir together half a cup of grated Parmesan cheese, three tablespoons of each one of these – mayonnaise, sour cream, and butter. Then you want zest of about half of the lemon, one and a half tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and one and a half tablespoons of capers. A three-quarter teaspoon of onion powder, half a teaspoon of kosher salt, and half a teaspoon of dried dill weed. Half a teaspoon of hot sauce if you like it spicy. Okay, it’s not going to be super spicy. It just adds a nice little tang or kick to the sauce and then finishes with a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. Give that all a mix and then set that aside. You don’t need that quite yet. 

Now you’re going to want to prepare your rimmed baking sheet by covering it with foil and then spraying it generously with some type of non-stick cooking spray. Then go ahead and lay the tilapia filets on the baking sheet so they are not overlapping or touching. Pop that under the broiler for about three minutes. Then you’re going to pull it out of the oven and flip those filets over. Now you need the Parmesan sauce. You’re going to grab that Parmesan sauce and divide it evenly across all four filets and then spread it to the edges of each piece of fish. Then return it to the broiler for about another four or five minutes and it’s done.

That is it. That is the whole entire recipe. Isn’t it crazy? Your fish will be nice and flaky. The Parmesan sauce gets kind of golden in spots. Now if some of it starts to seep off of the fish when it comes out of the oven, you can just kind of spoon that back over the fish. 

For side dishes, when I am serving Parmesan tilapia, I like to add usually some type of vegetable and some type of starch. For the vegetable, I just love to do an oven-roasted asparagus. You could even pop it in the oven when the tilapia is in there. My oven-roasted asparagus is cooked at 400 degrees for 12 minutes, but since you have that broiler on, you could probably get it cooked in, I don’t know, like eight minutes. 

Then I also like to serve a couscous on the side. If you’ve never made couscous, it’s ready in about eight minutes because you just boil some broth or water. Pop that couscous in there, remove it from the heat and let it sit covered for five minutes. That’s it. It’s done. 

So as you can see, all of these dishes are really done and ready in 15 minutes. You’re going to have an amazing dinner. I will place the links for the full printable recipes for the Parmesan tilapia and the oven roasted asparagus, so they will be easy for you to find right in the show notes. 

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Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, make your dinner time a little easier.