Episode 104 Marinated Fish Tacos

Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Suzy Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: What’s up everybody? What’s good? All right, I am back in the studio today. We had a beautiful vacation last week. We were right around like the Destin, Florida area. I think they call it 30A. It’s like Caribbean water, which is crazy because it’s northern Florida. It’s amazing. Highly recommend it if you need a really great family vacation. It is a wonderful spot to be. 

Now that I’m back in the mix, we’re going to make a really easy recipe for dinner tonight. We’re making tilapia fish tacos. I think that my husband didn’t quite get his fill of fish when we were in Florida, so we’re going to take this opportunity to make a super simple recipe that’s going to fulfill that fish craving for him. 

The nice thing about tilapia is that it’s a super quick cooking fish and it’s pretty inexpensive, especially as we’re coming off a vacation and we’ve spent all of our money. We need an economical dinner. So this recipe is going to fit that bill. 

Tilapia Tacos Recipe: Not a ton of tips and tricks today. You know, everything is pretty much straightforward. We’re going to make a kind of marinated tilapia, and then we’re going to serve it with a chipotle lime crema on tacos. So let’s go ahead and just get straight into the recipe.

We’re going to start this recipe with one and a half pounds of tilapia filets. From what I just purchased, that was about four filets. Then we’re going to marinate them really quickly. So you’re going to generously season both sides of the filet with salt and pepper. Then, in a 9×13 pan or some type of pan that will fit all of the filets, you’re going to mix together 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the zest and juice of 1 lime, 3 garlic cloves that are just chopped up, 3 teaspoons of chili powder, 1.5 teaspoons of ground cumin, 3 quarters teaspoon of smoked paprika, and a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Now if you don’t like it super hot, you can take the cayenne pepper out completely, or if you like it really spicy, add a little bit more. But mix all of that together, and then you’re going to place the tilapia filets in that mixture, and rub that paste onto both sides of the filets. You can cover that up and chill and let it marinate for about 20 or 30 minutes in the fridge. 

While that’s marinating, you could certainly get all of your other things ready. So like your tortillas, your lettuce, your salsas, get all of the taco things ready for when it’s time to eat. So now is the really quick part. We’re going to cook the tilapia filets and this happens very quickly. So in a large nonstick skillet, you’re going to heat two tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat. You’re just going to cook those filets for about two to three minutes on each side until they’re nice and flaky and cooked through. Fish is cooked through when it reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees. You can always check that way. Now what I like to do is let that tilapia cool just a little bit and then I break it apart into one inch chunks. 

We said at the beginning, we are going to serve this with a chipotle lime crema, which is so delicious. Super easy to make. So in a small bowl, you’re just going to whisk together half a cup of mayonnaise, a quarter cup of sour cream, three teaspoons of fresh lime juice, three chipotle chilies in adobo sauce. So that’s actually a canned product that you can get in the Mexican food aisle at your grocery store. You’ll need three of the chilies that are in the can. Usually there’s five to six chilies in there. Don’t use all of them because they’re really, really spicy. So you’ll chop those up, put those in the bowl. One large garlic clove and two tablespoons of milk. Just whisk it together and that’s ready to go.

Now that you’ve got everything ready for your tilapia fish tacos, you can let everybody just make their own tacos. Or if you want, what we love to do is take either a corn tortilla or a flour tortilla, warm it up, and then put a little bit of angel hair slaw down the center. Top that with either salsa, corn salsa, esquites is really good in this taco. Then you’re going to put your pieces of tilapia on top of there. Then drizzle it with that chipotle lime crema, do a spritz of lime, maybe some extra cilantro, and it’s super, super delicious. 

So that does it for the full recipe for tilapia fish tacos. Of course, I will link every recipe that I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you so you can click through and you can print it, save it, pin it, share it, whatever you want to do when you’re ready to make these tilapia fish tacos.

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinnertime a little easier. See ya! 

Double Dip: Alright, now it’s time for the double dip. Thank you so much for sticking around. Every week on this podcast you can stick around for the double dip at the end of the show and know what we’re going to make next week. Then you can have all of the groceries ready to cook along with me next Thursday. 

So, next week, we are making an older recipe from my website. It is for a pesto sausage lasagna skillet. We love these lasagna skillet recipes because it’s like you can have all of the flavors and the deliciousness of lasagna, but it doesn’t take you 75 hours to make.

So what you’re going to need to make this pesto lasagna skillet is one pound of ground Italian sausage. You can use any version you like. So spicy, mild, turkey, pork, whatever you want to use. You need some yellow or white onion, garlic, kosher salt, dried basil, 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, half a cup of pesto and half a cup of marinara. Eight uncooked lasagna noodles, half a cup of ricotta cheese. Four ounces of grated mozzarella and a quarter cup of pine nuts. That’s it. 

You’re going to make a super delicious lasagna skillet. So I hope you will join me then and I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead.