Easy Pan Fried Pacific Rockfish Recipe

Fish is one of those lovely proteins that generally cooks up pretty quickly. It's a great choice for dinner when you need a fast and easy recipe that tastes delicious. But what about when you're craving the crisp crunch of fried fish? Mixing batters and heating up a lot of oil is too much work most days. Thankfully, we have a solid alternative. This easy pan fried Pacific rockfish recipe is so simple all around. It takes less than 10 minutes to make, and delivers on the crisp, fried fish flavor.

By using a simple dry dredge and a hot pan, recipe developer Mikayla Marin from The Flour Handprint created a recipe that will work literally any night of the week. With just seven ingredients and a few minutes of your time, you can have a hot platter of crispy, pan fried Pacific rockfish ready to serve to your family or guests. So skip out on the heavy beer batters, ditch the multiple breading bowls, and discover how delicious and quick a rockfish filet can be to enjoy with this scrumptious recipe.

Before we send you scratching your head to the fish section, let's chat about rockfish. It's helpful to know that there are many, many varieties of rockfish out there, and they may go by a different name.

We're using a Pacific rockfish for this recipe today, which you may also recognize as Pacific snapper or rock cod (via The Spruce Eats). The most important detail is of course, that it's a firm white fleshed fish with a mild flavor. The filets are generally pretty thin, and the fish cooks up flaky.

Once you know that, you can easily look for rockfish (or understand what you can use as a substitute). Our best recommendations are cod, sea bass, or perch, though you'll need to adjust cooking times based on the thickness of those filets.

In all of the tests, pan fried rockfish simply has better flavor when the salt is added directly to the fish filets rather than the dry dredge mixture. Depending on the size of the rockfish filets you have, it can be difficult to fit an entire one into a pan or the dredge bowl.

We recommend just cutting each of the typically long filets in half to create two shorter ones. Not only are they easier to handle, but they'll also fit neatly into your non-stick pan during cooking. After that, it's really very easy. Just pinch some salt, and sprinkle it over each filet on both sides. For us, about ⅛ teaspoon was about right for each piece.

Thin rockfish filets don't take long to cook perfectly. With your preheated nonstick pan ready to go, it should only take two to three minutes per side for the rockfish to reach the ideal internal temperature of 145 F. This is really easy to do. Simply place the filets into the hot oil, and let them cook, unmoving for two minutes. Then, flip and repeat.

If you notice that the filets are a bit blond for your liking, you can increase the burner heat to encourage more color on the outside, but be wary — nobody likes dried, overcooked fish!