Apron Free Cooking ~ Tilapia Casserole

By Noel Lizotte

I don’t know about you, but I’m con­stantly try­ing to change up the menu. I get tired of eat­ing the same thing all the time. I picked up some tilapia when I went gro­cery shop­ping this last week. It’s the one fish my hus­band likes.

Ok, it’s the locally avail­able fish that he likes. He had a type of fish on a Caribbean island vaca­tion, years past, and is always on the look­out for it. Stores in Ohio just don’t carry Wahoo Fish.

Tilapia is a good choice for my fam­ily. Its mild fla­vor and hearty tex­ture make it a favorite. Some mem­bers of my fam­ily aren’t crazy about strong fla­vored fish, if you know what I mean.

Usu­ally we have tilapia wrapped in foil and grilled, but Jan­u­ary isn’t grilling weather. I had to try out a dif­fer­ent approach to serv­ing the tilapia.

Tilapia Casse­role

1 lb Tilapia

1 pkg (10 oz) Mixed Vegetables

1 pkg (6 oz) Ori­en­tal Fla­vored Rice

1 c Bread Crumbs

Thaw frozen tilapia and mixed veg­eta­bles. Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees Fahren­heit. Pre­pare rice accord­ing to pack­age direc­tions. Layer rice, tilapia and veg­eta­bles in 9 x 9 bak­ing dish. Sprin­kle bread crumbs over all. Bake for 30 minutes.

Make It A Meal: serve with clear soup, such as chicken broth or miso. Soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and sweet and sour sauce make good condi­ments. You could top the meal off with a cup of hot tea and a for­tune cookie.

Approx­i­mate Nutri­tional Infor­ma­tion: Serv­ings Per Recipe: 6, Amount Per Serv­ing: Calo­ries: 146, Total Fat: 2 g, Cho­les­terol: 16 mg, Sodium: 348 mg, Total Carbs: 24 g, Pro­tein: 10 g.

Vari­a­tions: you could use any fish in place of the tilapia. Salmon and perch are read­ily avail­able in the frozen food sec­tion of the gro­cery. Also, if you’re a shrimp fan, toss in a few of those guys to give this dish a bit of extra seafood flair!

The fam­ily loved this com­bi­na­tion! The fla­vors blended nicely and we had a nutri­tious meal that cov­ered all food groups. Sur­prise, there were no left­overs! I might have to dou­ble up next time, so I can have lunch leftovers.

As a time sav­ing step, you could pull the frozen fish and veg­eta­bles out of the freezer and place them in the refrig­er­a­tor in the morn­ing. By time you get home from work and are ready to start fix­ing sup­per, they’ll be thawed.

Experts say that we should be eat­ing seafood at least once every week. Many peo­ple find seafood a chal­lenge to pre­pare at home. I think that’s due to the expec­ta­tion that seafood at home should look just like the seafood we get at restau­rants. It might also have a bit to do with the lack of fresh seafood away from the coast. How­ever, there are many flash frozen seafood options in most gro­ceries. I’m going to work at adding more fish to our diet. Maybe the pop­u­lar­ity of this recipe will help!

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! This recipe is sim­i­lar to ones printed in her cook­book Apron Free Cook­ing which is avail­able on the web­site www.apronfreecooking.com.

Posted by Noel Lizotte on Jan 21 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.