Parmesan Crusted Sea Bass Recipe (2024)

December 17, 2008 by G. Stephen Jones 7 Comments

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Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass

Every once in a while, I come across a recipe that I consider "as good as it gets," and this recipe for Parmesan Crusted Wild Sea Bass is one of them. I adapted this recipe from one of my favorite cooking magazines, Cuisine at Home.

Their recipe calls for halibut, but when I went to one of my favorite seafood stores, Bywood Seafood Market, I was told fresh halibut was out of season, so I opted for wild sea bass, which worked perfectly fine.

This recipe is so good that any meaty white fish would work. In fact, there was some leftover "crazy water" (read on) leftovers, so I duplicated the dish with chicken thighs the next night and served it with broth, which was delicious. I think it would have been better with boneless chicken breasts, but I had boneless thighs on hand from the local Farmer's Market.

The "crazy water" I mentioned above is a simple broth that, traditionally, the fish is poached in. It consists of vegetables, water, wine, herbs and a few special ingredients to give the broth an incredibly flavorful taste that you then cook orzo pasta in to give the broth some extra body.

In this recipe, we don't poach the fish but roast it so the parmesan crust can firm up and get crisp. It doesn't take long at all to prepare this dish, only 15 minutes to roast the fish and prepare the broth. It takes more time to prep the ingredients and I highly recommend you practice "mise en place" before you start cooking.

That is, get all your ingredients prepped before you start. As you can see from the list below, there are a lot of ingredients, but I found I had most of them in my pantry already.

The original recipe is for 2 people and calls for two 4 oz. halibut fillets, but I purchased 2 pounds of wild sea bass and cut 6 individual steaks for four adults and 2 kids and there was enough for everyone.

I highly recommend you try this recipe and would love to hear your comments about you've tried it. I think you could make many variations to this recipe and I'd like to hear what you come up with.

How to Roast Peppers

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5 from 2 votes

Parmesan Crusted Sea Bass Recipe

Parmesan crusted anything sounds good to me.

Prep Time30 minutes mins

Cook Time15 minutes mins

Ingredients

½ cup panko crumbs these are Japanese bread crumbs but regular bread crumbs work fine too
4 teaspoons Parmesan cheese grated
zest lemon finely minced
12 oz pesto purchased or homemade
2 pounds wild sea bass cut into 6 steaks spray olive oil

For the Broth or Crazy Water

½ large red onion minced
2 tablespoons garlic minced
4 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup dry white wine
4 cups water
1 cup grape tomatoes halved
½ cup orzo pasta dry
2 teaspoons sugar
4 sprigs fresh thyme
½ cup zucchini coarsely chopped
7 ½ ounces roasted red peppers cut into thin strips
½ cup Kalamata olives halved and pitted
4 tablespoons fresh parsley chopped juice from the zested lemon above Salt & Pepper, to taste
fresh lemon juice from 1 lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

As always, preheat the oven to 450º F.
Combine the panko (bread crumbs) with Parmesan cheese, lemon zest and season with salt and pepper.
Apply a spoonful of pesto on the non-skin side of each sea bass steak and then top with the bread crumb mixture. Press the bread crumbs into the pesto with the back of your spoon.
Spray each steak with a little spray oil, transfer to a baking sheet that has been coated with some spray oil and refrigerate until you are going to prepare the broth.

To Make the Broth

Start by heating up a saute pan over medium-high heat, adding oil, and sauteing the onions and garlic. Saute for 3 - 4 minutes until the onions are translucent.
Remove the pan from the heat and add wine to deglaze the pan.
Return the pan to the heat and simmer until the wine is reduced to an essence.
Add the water and stir in the tomatoes, orzo, sugar and fresh thyme. Simmer for about 10 minutes until the orzo is cooked. While the orzo is simmering, it's time to roast the sea bass.

Roasting Wild Sea Bass

Remove the baking sheet with the sea bass from the refrigerator and roast in your preheated oven for 12 minutes. The panko bread crumbs should be golden and the fish white and flaky.

Finish & Serving

When the orzo is done, add the roasted pepper strips, zucchini and kalamata olives to the broth and simmer until heated through.
Remove the pan from the heat and add the fresh parsley and fresh lemon juice. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
When it's time to serve, add some of the broth (crazy water) with vegetables to shallow bowls and place a sea bass steak into each. Serve.

Notes

As I said at the start of this post, this recipe doesn't take long to cook, but you'll want to have all your ingredients prepped (mise en place) before you start.

The recipe also suggests preparing the bread crumbs, adding them to the fish and refrigerating ahead of time (up to 4 hours) but make the broth just before serving. This is a great idea especially if you are having a dinner party and want to hang out with your friends.

Hope you get to try this and let us know what you think. This dish is outrageous!

Some of My Favorite Seafood Recipes

Shrimp Scampi Recipe
How to Bake Salmon or Slow Bake Salmon
Salmon Curry with Coconut Miso Recipe
Grilled Salmon Delight: Perfectly Cooked Catch of the Day
Everything You Need to Know About Ceviche
Roasted Cod with Potatoes and Fennel Recipe
Classic Tuna Casserole with Dill Recipe
Shrimp Sauce Recipe

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I'm a work-at-home dad who enjoys cooking, learning everything I can about the culinary world and sharing it with you. To learn more about me... Read More…

Reader Interactions

Comments

amy
December 21, 2008 at 6:35 pm

i didn't know where to comment for the mash potato section, but i have made up my own recipe which i think is delicious;
1 clove of garlic
i spoonful of mayonaise
a grating of cheddar cheese
cream
butter
Reply
Royal
September 15, 2011 at 3:32 am

Excellent post. I was checking constantly this weblog and I am impressed! Extremely helpful information specifically the final phase. I maintain such information much. I used to be looking for this certain info for a long time. Thanks and good luck.
Reply
Kevin Gaouette
March 26, 2021 at 12:41 pm

Haven't tried it yet - am waiting for Amazon to delivery my groceries, but am very excited - it sounds delicious! I have a question about the roasted red peppers. The roasting of said peppers is not in your cooking instructions. I know how (perhaps not everyone does?) however unless you have an alternative to roasting them for this meal it does add a significant amount of time and some effort. Can you explain a bit more about this ingredient? I have some I roasted last week after a neighbor gave me more than I could eat while fresh and they are currently refrigerated in oil - could those be used?
Also, roughly what size am I aiming for on the zucchini?
Thanks so much,
Kevin
Reply
- G. Stephen Jones
  August 20, 2021 at 6:24 pm
  
  Hi Keven, thanks for pointing out I'm missing a link on how to roast peppers at home which is at https://www.reluctantgourmet.com/roasting-peppers-how-to-roast-peppers-at-home/ I just added it. I don't see why you couldn't use the peppers you roasted and are storing in olive oil. The recipe calls for olive oil so why not try using some of the oil you used to store them. It may have some infused flavor it it.
  Reply
Sarah Billings
August 25, 2022 at 2:19 pm

Absolutely delicious!!!
I amended to fit with what I had
No peppers but loads of dwarf beans
Used less water and more orzo in broth so more like a rissotto. Added extra Parmesan.
Had bass fillets rather than steaks but worked well
Made sorrel pesto with hazelnuts as no pesto in fridge but lots of sorrel in garden!
Thank you ??
@madrerumble
Reply
Michael
December 12, 2023 at 12:09 pm

What an incredible dish! I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, but decided to give it a go. My gosh, so glad I did! I didn't change much about the recipe and I loved the make ahead information that you provided. Prepping everything before starting the recipe really is key. I did prepare the fish hours before I baked it too. Because I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, I decided to cook the broth an extra 10 minutes before cooking the fish and added the zucchinis when adding tomatoes and other ingredients. After 10 minutes, I put the fish in the oven and continued to simmer the sauce until the fish was done. I only added juice from about half a lemon since I lucked out with a very juicy one.
I connected to your story as a self-taught home cook myself and "Cuisine at Home" is one of my favorite cooking magazines too. When you say it's "as good as it gets" I absolutely agree. Cannot wait prepare this again. We thought for next time we would like to have a crunchy piece of Ciabatta garlic bread to soak up some of the deliciousness!!
Thanks for making cooking easy to prepare amazing food!!
Reply
- G. Stephen Jones
  December 12, 2023 at 6:31 pm
  
  Hi Michael, thanks for reaching out and thanks for your comments. Thrilled you enjoyed the dish.
  Reply

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