Recipe for turbot - baked in the oven and au gratin

Recipe for turbot! Last week we decided to try cooking turbot. We bought a large fish in the fish shop and googled a lot of recipes. Then we made dinner for two days - and thus two completely different recipes for turbot.

What is turbot?

Turbot is a flatfish that lives in the Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea, at depths of 20-70 metres. In Sweden, it lives on both the east and west coasts. According to Wikipedia the fish has a number of old dialectal names such as "botta" and "butta", but it should apparently not be confused with "butt" which is flounder ... Other interesting information is that turbot is a provincial fish on Gotland and the Swedish angling record is 9.5kg!

Shopping and cooking turbot

We have seen turbot a few times in the fish counter and got curious. When we arrived there were two specimens, and the guy ahead of us in the queue took the second last one. The one left for us was a a real rascal. It had to go home! If we had wanted to, we could have done as the guy before and asked them to remove the head and fins, but that was not the case. We took the whole fish with us, which took up a considerable amount of space in the bike box. How would this go ...?

Recipe for turbot - turbot in the oven

Peter looked up turbot recipes online, and it turns out there are many different ways to cook turbot. It's common to cook it in the oven and common accompaniments include clarified butter and horseradish. After watching a film on YouTube, Peter decided to try cooking with coarse salt in the oven.

You need (2 servings)

• A small turbot
• Coarse salt
• Rice or potatoes
• Broccoli (or other cooked vegetable)
• Sauce of choice

Cold herb and citrus sauce

• 1 dl creme fraiche
• Lemon or lime juice
• Grated lemon or lime peel
• Timyan
• A little honey
• Salt and pepper

Do the following

If you want, you can ask them to cut off the head (or just the gills) and fins already at the fish counter. Otherwise, the time to do this is now! Peter cut off the head and then started cutting off the fins. But they probably had sharper scissors on that film he saw on YouTube... it was a knife!

Place coarse salt on a baking tray and place the fish on top of the salt, thick side up. For best results, insert a thermometer into the fish. You can take the fish out when the internal temperature is around 48-50 degrees, and it should not exceed 52 degrees. You should keep the oven at a fairly low temperature, around 100-120 degrees. It takes almost an hour for a 1kg fish to be ready and almost two hours for a 2kg fish.

Serve as follows

When you take the fish out of the oven, you can remove the skin and underneath you will find two fine fillets. By turning the fish over, you will find two more fillets. Serve with rice or boiled potatoes and a cooked vegetable such as broccoli, green peas, green beans or carrots.

We chose to serve it with a cold herb and citrus sauce, which was good (although perhaps a little too 'white'). Other possible sauces include lobster sauce, saffron sauce, white wine sauce or rum sauce. How did the fish taste? Very good! Firm and fine meat!

Recipe for turbot - gratin

But did we manage to eat all of that big turbot? No, we didn't. We had to put two fillets in the fridge for the next day. Then it was fish gratin! Fish gratin is a good dish, because you can use whatever you happen to have in the cupboards. You can do whatever you want!

You need (2 servings)

• Fillet of turbot
• Possibly some salmon
• Cream
• Possibly some creme fraiche
• Lobster fund
• Chives
• Salt and pepper
• Potatoes or mashed potatoes
• Pointed cabbage (or other vegetable suitable for frying)

Do the following

Set the oven to 220 degrees. If the fish is raw, it needs about 20 minutes in the oven. If it is cooked, much less time is needed. You can add raw fish from the beginning, and add cooked fish at the end. Mix the cream with the lobster stock and chives. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Let everything get hot in the oven.

Serve as follows

Serve with potatoes or mashed potatoes. Add some fried pointed cabbage (our new favourite!) or any other vegetable you can fry.

More turbot recipes?

Have you cooked or eaten turbot? Do you have an exciting recipe to share?