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Rock Fish in Butter Ponzu Sauce
Homemade Japanese ponzu sauce with soy sauce, dashi, yuzu/lemon juice, rice vinegar, and mirin. Paired with simple pan-fried fish fillet.
Pan-fried fish fillet is my family favorite dish. Whenever I make pan-fried fish dishes like Chinese pan fried fish with soy sauce, soy bean paste fish, or pan fried fish with Thai sweet chili sauce, I can be sure that the dish will be devoured in no time at all.
Today, I am going to share another of my favorite and easy to make pan fried fish dish, rock fish in butter ponzu sauce.
Homemade Ponzu Sauce
You can buy ready made ponzu sauce from most Asian groceries, but you can also make it easily at home from soy sauce, dashi stock, yuzu juice (or lemon juice), rice vinegar, and mirin.
My easy to remember ratio for a homemade ponzu sauce is this:
- 2 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 tablespoon dashi stock
- 1 tablespoon yuzu juice (or lemon juice)
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon mirin
Just mix all the ingredients together to make home-made ponzu sauce.
How to pan fry fish fillet and prepare the ponzu sauce
Here is how to pan fry our rock fish fillets:
- Pat dry rock fish fillets (or any kind of white fish fillet of your choice, such as cod, sea bream, tilapia), sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dust with all-purpose flour.
- Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Once the pan is hot, add oil, and swirl.
- Add fish fillets to the hot frying pan. Let the fish fillets sit on the frying pan until the edges look golden brown.
- Try to give the fillets a gentle nudge. If the fillets do not stick and can be moved around easily, flip to the other side. Again, just let the fillets sit on the pan until they self release.
- Remove the pan-fried fillets from the frying pan and set aside.
Next, prepare the sauce by boiling together 2:1 ratio of ponzu sauce and butter. For a 500 gram total of fish fillet, you will need
- 4 tablespoon ponzu sauce and
- 2 tablespoon butter.
Once the sauce boils, return the fish fillet into the sauce and simmer for 1 minute and the dish is done! Super simple no? You can dress the dish up with a simple salad and garnish with thinly sliced scallions. This goes really well with steamed white rice.
Rock Fish in Butter Ponzu Sauce
Ingredients
- 500 gram rock fish fillet (about 4 portions)
- salt
- pepper
- all purpose flour
- 4 tablespoon ponzu sauce (use the homemade ponzu sauce below if you don't want to buy ready made ponzu sauce)
- 2 tablespoon butter
- 2 scallions, thinly sliced
- Home-made ponzu sauce (mix together the following)
- 2 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 tablespoon dashi stock
- 1 tablespoon yuzu juice (or lemon juice)
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon mirin
Instructions
- Pat dry fish fillet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dust with all purpose flour.
- Heat oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Cook the fish fillet until golden brown on both sides. Set aside.
- Wipe the pan clean, or use another clean frying pan. Boil together ponzu sauce and butter, then return the fish fillet to simmer for 1 minute.
- Turn the heat off, transfer to serving plates, and garnish with some thinly sliced scallions. You can serve with a side of simple salad, and this dish goes really well with steamed white rice.
Comments
We made this for dinner and it came out so delicious! The butter ponzu sauce had so much flavor, we were licking our plates!
Now this is totally my kind of dinner. I can't find yuzu local to me so lemon will have to do. Thanks so much for an amazing recipe.
Beautiful and simple - this one has hit the meal planner for next week. Love ponzu sauce too. We had a great dish w/ ponzu in the restaurant I ran in NY - I’ve never made it myself so now am excited to try.
I love fried fish and am always looking for a great sauce, this is a must try. Luckily we have a great Asian market near to get your ingredients.
I'm always looking for new fish recipes. Thanks for sharing this one!
I don't think I've ever had rock fish or ponzu sauce but wow - this is making me wish I was having a second dinner and I am betting your homemade ponzu is so much tastier than store bought! Such a scrumptious meal!
Can’t wait to try this! Sounds like an umami bomb!
Wow this sounds amazing! I've never actually heard about ponzu sauce and cannot wait to give this a try!
I often come to your site for new recipes, and each time my mouth water. This is another recipe for rockfish that I am planning to make tomorrow. It sounds amazingly delicious!
The sauce sounds out of this world. I'll try this the next time I decide to have fish for dinner.
I wanted to try something new with salmon, and since I have a jar of Korean yuja-cha, I used a glob of that instead of the yuzu juice. I'm sure that made it a little sweeter, since that's basically yuzu marmalade- came out great though. The result was a nicely cooked fish with a rich citrusy sauce that I was happy to soak my rice in. Would definitely recommend for salmon!
This recipe is so good. Thanks for the recipe.
This turned out really well. I’ve been making my own ponzu for a few years now, and this recipe makes great use of it. The interplay between the butter and the tartness of the ponzu works perfectly. Nicely done.
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