Seafood & Fish
2025 recipes found

Smoked Salmon Sandwich With Goat Cheese
At the Russ and Daughters store in Manhattan, which specializes in smoked and cured fish of all kinds, I found a goat cream cheese that inspired this sandwich.
Tuna Mayo Rice Bowl
This homey dish takes comforting canned tuna to richer, silkier heights. Mayonnaise helps to hold the tuna together and toasted sesame oil lends incomparable nuttiness. You can adjust the seasonings to your taste: Use as much or as little soy sauce as you’d like for a savory accent. You can lean into the nuttiness of this rice bowl by sowing the top with toasted sesame seeds, or amp up the savoriness with furikake or scallions. A staple of home cooking in Hawaii and South Korea (where it is sometimes called deopbap), this simple meal is a workday workhorse.

Tuna Crunch Sandwiches
A tuna salad and potato chip sandwich may not be quite as classic a pairing as peanut butter and jelly, but it is, anecdotally, many middle-schoolers’ first forays into experimenting with flavors and textures, and no less delicious. Beyond crunch, chips also add stability to the sandwich, holding the tuna salad in place as you eat. There’s no wrong way to make the sandwich, but seasoning tuna salad with red onion and celery, plenty of olive oil and little lemon juice, and using kettle-style salt and vinegar potato chips are especially alluring. There’s the word “optional” next to the most optional ingredients, but consider every ingredient other than the tuna, bread and chips to be adaptable according to your own taste (or how your mom made it).

Sardine Salad
For a vivid take on lunchtime tuna salad, use oil-rich sardines and skip the mayonnaise. Emulsifying the deeply seasoned oil from the sardine tin with lemon juice and mustard makes the salad creamy like mayonnaise does but with flavors that are more intense and pronounced. Add any of the sharp, crunchy, fresh pops you like in your tuna or whitefish salad, such as capers, cornichons, pickled peppers or herbs, and eat this sardine salad over greens, on a bagel or English muffin, or between two slices of toast.

Kimchi Tuna Salad
Kimchi and canned tuna make a popular combination in Korean cooking. These two pantry staples are found together in a number of dishes like kimchi jjigae and kimbap, and here they are the basis of a lively, fortifying salad. Combine them with fresh ginger and celery for crunch (or an equal amount of other crunchy vegetables, like thinly sliced sugar snap or snow peas, radishes, carrot, cabbage or fennel). The dressing is made using the spicy liquid from the kimchi jar, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil, but because each jar of kimchi is different, you may want to tweak the seasonings to taste. Eat the salad on its own; with gim, or seaweed, as a hand roll; or with something starchy to balance the punch, like a burger bun, rice, boiled potatoes, soba or ramen noodles.

Snapper Escovitch
A Caribbean favorite, this light, tender and flaky fish is made with whole snapper, but you can also use fillets for ease. This recipe has a mellow spice to let the flavor of the fish shine through, but it’s open to adaptation: Feel free to add a little more hot pepper or allspice, if you like, for more intensity. If you’re in a hurry or low on spices, you can substitute Old Bay, jerk or Cajun seasoning blends for the spice mix in Step 1. Then, turn it into a sandwich (see Tip), paired with sweet plantain fries, or eat it as a light meal on its own.

Shalom Japan’s Lox Bowl
The lox bowl at Shalom Japan, a Brooklyn restaurant created by chef-owners Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel, shows how the combination of ingredients can tell a story. Lox, a Jewish-American staple, is set over a bed of sushi rice, inspired by Japanese chirashi bowls, in a meal that marries the cultures of both chefs. The dish combines lox, avocado and spicy mayo with crunchy cucumber, tangy pickles, sweetened kombu and fresh herbs, in a pile of salty, sweet and acidic umami. It takes some prep and quite a few ingredients, but you can pick and choose toppings to taste: “There aren’t too many rules, other than doing fish over rice,” Mr. Israel said. They cure their own salmon with parsley and dill, coriander and bonito flakes at Shalom Japan, but you can top your rice with store-bought gravlax, or even cooked salmon, tuna or scallops, before piling on your desired garnishes.

Pressure Cooker Indian Butter Shrimp
A play on the classic Indian chicken makhani, in this recipe yogurt and lime juice-marinated shrimp are cooked in a buttery, gently spiced tomato mixture. The key here is to cook the sauce under pressure, but to use the sauté function to quickly cook the shrimp so they don’t turn rubbery. Serve this over rice to catch every drop of the fragrant, creamy sauce. If you’re a fan of Indian pickles—lime, lemon, mango, and the like—a spoonful of one or all three on the side would not be out of place. This is one of 10 recipes from Melissa Clark’s “Dinner in an Instant: 75 Modern Recipes for Your Pressure Cooker, Multicooker, and Instant Pot” (Clarkson Potter, 2017). Melissa Clark’s “Dinner in an Instant” is available everywhere books are sold. Order your copy today.

Thai-Style Sweet and Salty Shrimp
Made of equal parts sugar, fish sauce and vinegar, the sauce in the famous pad Thai at Kris Yenbamroong’s Night + Market restaurants in Los Angeles is too good to be used exclusively on rice noodles. This adaptation is simmered with a tangle of shrimp, peanuts, scallions, chile and lime juice for for a sweet, salty stir-fry. Add a quick cooking vegetable, like peas, thinly sliced asparagus or bean sprouts, with the shrimp, or substitute tofu, salmon or cubed boneless chicken thighs for the shrimp. Serve over shredded cabbage, rice, a roasted sweet potato or rice noodles.

Chile-Crisp Shrimp and Green Beans
This stir-fry is inspired by the taste and textures of chile crisp, that fiery condiment made by infusing oil with dried chiles, garlic and shallots. For this 20-minute recipe, make a quick version of the oil while the shrimp marinates in a combination of soy sauce, sugar, red-pepper flakes and cumin. Use the infused oil to cook the green beans (or asparagus), shrimp and peanuts, then serve topped with the fried shallots and garlic. It’s a deeply savory, spicy and satisfying dinner.

Pressure Cooker Pork With Citrus and Mint
In this recipe for a Thai-inspired salad, made for a 6- to 8-quart electric pressure cooker, crispy pork, flavored with fish sauce and lime, is paired with sweet and juicy pomelo (or use grapefruit) and heady fried garlic chips. If you’d rather make this in a slow cooker, you can; it'll take 5 to 7 hours on high. (You can also make it in a stovetop pressure cooker, by trimming a few minutes off the cooking time. The stovetop versions tend to operate at a slightly higher pressure, cooking food more quickly.)

Pressure Cooker Shrimp Biryani
The key to cooking shrimp biryani in an electric pressure cooker is to buy jumbo shrimp, which won’t overcook in the amount of time it takes to cook the rice. This version, from Chandra Ram’s “The Complete Indian Instant Pot Cookbook,” is bright with ginger root, fresh curry leaves and plenty of lime juice. Kashmiri chile is a very mild red chile powder that can be found in Indian markets, but if you can’t get it, substitute three parts sweet paprika and one part cayenne. And if you can’t get the fresh curry leaves, simply leave them out. The dish won’t be quite as fragrant, but will still be delicious.

Slow Cooker Shrimp in Purgatory
This recipe is inspired by eggs in purgatory, a Southern Italian dish in which eggs simmer in a spicy tomato sauce. Shrimp aren’t commonly thought of as slow cooker material, but here, the sauce simmers for several hours, and the quick-cooking shrimp is dropped in just a bit before you want to eat. (You can use frozen shrimp; just thaw them first.) Cooking the sauce on high allows the onion and garlic to tenderize and melt into the sauce. The tomatoes and roasted peppers caramelize slightly as they simmer, so when fully cooked, the sauce should be a shade darker than when you started. The sauce holds well on the warm setting. Serve the shrimp in shallow bowls on its own, or over orzo, couscous or polenta and with crusty bread. Find a skillet version of this dish here.

Grilled Seafood Burgers With Old Bay Mayonnaise
Tender cod and sweet shrimp transform into juicy seafood burgers that are perfect for easy summer grilling. The shrimp do double duty here: They act as a natural binder, eliminating the need for bread crumbs and eggs and giving the burgers a pure seafood essence. They also lend a snappy, firm texture to the patties. A quick cook on the grill imparts great smoky notes that complement the fish, and an Old Bay mayo sauce highlights the seafood flavors even further.

Sheet-Pan Shrimp Gratin
The best part of a gratin is the crispy crust, and, here in this shallow sheet-pan version, there’s more of it. Flaky panko bread crumbs — with a sprinkling of mozzarella and Gruyère — form a crisp, almost chiplike topping that tastes not unlike the edges of garlicky, cheesy Texas toast. In fact, the topping comes off in large, snackable pieces. As this bakes (for just 10 minutes!), the spice blend perfumes the kitchen, thanks to herbes de Provence. The shiitakes add earthy heft and incredible umami, but for a more delicately flavored gratin, you can leave them out. Serve this with a big green salad or eat it straight out of the pan.

Sheet-Pan Gochujang Shrimp and Green Beans
Say hello to your broiler, that super-intense direct heat source in your oven that, like a grill, crisps food fast. (It’s either in the top of your oven or in the pull-out drawer below.) While it heats, toss shrimp and green beans in a fiery sauce of gochujang (a Korean fermented chile paste), soy sauce and honey, then broil for mere minutes. Just five minutes! The shrimp and green beans emerge with blistered outsides and snappy insides, reminiscent of Sichuan dry-fried green beans, while the sauce and the caramelized char make quick work of building deep, addictive flavors. Serve with rice, noodles or lettuce leaves. To make it vegetarian, swap shrimp for quick-cooking vegetables, edamame or well-drained tofu.

Broiled Turmeric Salmon With Corn and Green Beans
This meal marries charred flavors with bright summer vegetables, and no grill is required. Broiling salmon skin side up creates crispy skin without drying out the delicate flesh. Alongside your salmon, blister green beans and corn, then toss them with lime juice, raw corn and red onion for a balance of crunchy and tender, sweet and scorched. Turmeric and red-pepper flakes bring earthiness alongside the sweetness of the fish, corn and green beans, but garam masala, cumin or jerk seasoning would also work well.

Maple-Roasted Tofu With Butternut Squash and Bacon
A small amount of bacon adds a lot of smoky flavor to sweet maple-roasted vegetables and glazed tofu. It’s a colorful, cozy sheet-pan meal for tofu lovers who also eat meat, or bacon eaters who are trying to eat less meat. To make this dish vegan, skip the bacon, and add 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika to the maple syrup mixture. Dicing the squash into small cubes helps it roast at the same rate as the brussels sprouts, so be sure to keep the pieces around 1/2 inch in size.

Broiled Salmon and Asparagus With Herbs
Many people fear the broiler because they don’t know how to use it, or they’re worried they’ll overdo it and end up with a scorched dinner. But when used properly, it’s a useful tool ideal for crisping chicken skin, charring vegetables and melting cheese. Broiling is also a great method for perfectly cooking salmon: It yields a deeply browned crust and a tender center that isn’t overcooked. All broilers are different, and knowing the strength of yours and being aware of any uneven “hot spots” help maximize the efficiency of it. (As your dish cooks, look to see if it’s cooking evenly across the surface, which will tell you if you need to move things around.) In this recipe, soy-and-mustard-coated salmon and asparagus cook under the broiler, and are topped with an herb salad for a hit of brightness, freshness and acidity.

Sheet-Pan Salmon and Eggplant With XO Sauce
XO sauce, a prized seafood condiment from Hong Kong, involves frying pricey dried shrimp and scallops with Chinese cured ham and aromatics until jammy and full of umami. This pantry-friendly version uses smoked mussels to replicate the seafood flavor without breaking the bank. The rich, sweet-salty sauce balances fatty salmon and silky eggplant, but the savory condiment has endless uses: Dollop it on scrambled eggs, fried rice, roasted veggies or noodles. Extra sauce can be refrigerated in an airtight container for one month.

Peanut Butter-Glazed Salmon and Green Beans
This fast and fun weeknight meal reveals an unexpected use for peanut butter, transforming it into a savory five-ingredient sauce. The pantry favorite is combined with tangy lemon juice, fragrant ginger and toasted sesame oil to create a rich, supernutty glaze that pairs well with fatty salmon. Here the salmon is roasted on a rack of green beans, but a bed of broccoli florets would be an excellent alternative. The sweet-salty glaze can be made a day ahead and brought to room temperature before using.

Sheet-Pan Shrimp Scampi
This has all the garlicky, lemony flavors of classic shrimp scampi, but is cooked on a sheet pan instead of a skillet. This allows the lemon to char and caramelize, and gives the shrimp a condensed, deep flavor from roasting at high heat. Serve it with crusty bread for dipping, or over pasta to absorb the sauce, and with more lemon juice and red pepper flakes showered on top for pizzazz.

Salt and Pepper Shrimp Rolls
Inspired by jiao yan xia, the classic Chinese dish of head-on, fried shrimp finished with a Sichuan or white pepper salt seasoning, these shrimp rolls celebrate the flavors of salt and pepper. Peeled shrimp are seasoned, breaded with cornstarch and fried until super crunchy, then sprinkled with a black pepper-salt. Once cooked, they’re tucked into toasted rolls smeared with a zingy garlic mayo. Fresh cilantro, sliced chile and a squeeze of fresh lime brighten the hearty sandwich. Store any leftover pepper-salt in an airtight container and use it as a seasoning for roasted meats and vegetables.

Salmon With Salsa Fresca
There was a time when the appearance of the first ripe tomatoes would have inspired me to make the southern Italian sauce of raw tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil. These days, I turn to a Mexican-style salsa fresca: tomatoes, white onion, chili and loads of cilantro and lime. I love salsa with fish, and since it is wild salmon season, the marriage seems opportune. Halibut and swordfish, whether grilled, broiled, roasted, or even steamed, are equally fine. Though the salsa is quick to prepare, it's best if allowed to sit for 15 to 30 minutes before serving. The tomatoes' juices will run, and the flavors will mingle. No more than an hour, though.