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Healthy Home Economist / Archives / Recipes / Seafood / Fish Recipes / Healthy Fish Fingers Recipe

Healthy Fish Fingers Recipe

by Sarah Pope / Affiliate Links ✔

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Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
  • Commercial Fish Fingers Ingredients
  • Two Keys to Healthy Fish Fingers
  • Fish Fingers Recipe
  • Homemade Fish Fingers Recipe

fish fingers recipeFish fingers are generally considered junk food by parents seeking to feed their children a healthy diet. A little investigation of the commercial brands available at the supermarket quickly reveals why.

Typically fried in cheap, rancid, (genetically modified) GMO vegetable oils like soy or canola with a long, eyebrow raising list of ingredients filled with unpronounceable additives and fillers, it’s no wonder this simple dish that has been made and enjoyed for centuries is on the avoid list of the food label reading public.

The sad thing is that brands at the healthfood store aren’t that much better with the same cheap, rancid oils used in most cases. Here’s the ingredients list of a very popular (and expensive) gluten free fish fingers brand I examined recently. Ironically, the motto of the company making these fish fingers is “Trust Made Simple”.

Trust? Seriously? Not with these ingredients! 

Commercial Fish Fingers Ingredients

Ian’s Gluten Free Fish Sticks: Fish sticks (whole Pollock fillets, coated with (cornflake crumbs (milled corn, cane sugar, sea salt) water, yellow corn flour, corn starch, sea salt, garlic powder, baking powder)). Cooked in non-GMO expeller pressed canola oil.

Let’s starts with the positive ….

I’m glad to see that Ian’s is choosing non-GMO canola oil to fry the fish fingers. However, even non-GMO canola oil is a terribly unhealthy choice! Conola, oops, I mean canola oil, is a non-traditional, hybridized fat short for “Canadian oil”. It is far too high in polyunsaturated fats (36%) to be suitable for healthy frying. Even if you didn’t fry with it, it’s best to always avoid canola oil as commercial processing renders these types of oils terribly rancid. You just don’t notice any stench because of the careful deodorization that edible oil companies use to hide their industrialized misdeeds from the public.

By the way, have you ever wondered why in the world the healthfood industry STILL uses canola oil so extensively even though it is such an unhealthy fat?

I know I have, and the only reason I can come up with is this: canola oil is cheap, cheap, CHEAP.

What about the other ingredients? Even though Ian’s proclaims the canola oil to be GMO free on the label, what about all the other GMOs in there like cornflakes crumbs, yellow corn flour, and corn starch?  It appears Ian’s is only willing to make the extra effort to go nonGMO when it suits them.

Here’s what suits me. Spending my food dollars elsewhere.

If you roll your eyes and walk right by the low quality fish finger brands that are available at the supermarket and healthfood stores like I do, then you will be happy to learn that it is a fast, easy dish to make yourself.

Perhaps you even make this dish regularly for your family too. If so, please share your ideas and variations in the comments section.

Two Keys to Healthy Fish Fingers

The key to delicious, healthy fish fingers is twofold:  The quality oil selected for frying and the freshness of the fish. You can select any mild, flaky white fish you want to make your homemade fish fingers. I typically use snapper (either red or yellow) simply because it is readily available fresh, whole, and wild in my neck of the woods.

For frying, I use expeller coconut oil and keep the temperature at or below 325°F/ 163 °C to ensure that no free radicals form during cooking.  It is simple to keep tabs on the cooking temperature with an inexpensive candy thermometer. This really is an essential cooking tool that I use all the time!

Keeping the temperature as low as possible also minimizes the carcinogenic acrylamides that form during high heat cooking of any starch (the breading on the fish fingers is the culprit here).

Note that you don’t need to use coconut oil if you don’t want to as there are plenty of other healthy fats that are great such as beef tallow. I prefer expeller coconut oil because it is very cost effective and the results taste great. I also don’t always have tallow on hand.

Fish Fingers Recipe

Here’s how I make fish fingers. Prep/cooking time is only 20 minutes total – much faster even than pizza delivery (that’s a yuck idea anyway, so skip that thought).

Be sure to serve it with a healthy sauce. This cocktail sauce recipe is my favorite.

fish fingers recipe
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Homemade Fish Fingers Recipe

This recipe for homemade fish fingers is tasty, healthy, and fast and avoids the additive and GMO ingredients of commercial brands at the store even the organic ones!

Course Main Course
Total Time 20 minutes
Author Sarah Pope

Ingredients

  • 1-2 pounds fresh, wild, mild white fish fillets (I use snapper)
  • 1/4 -1/2 cup expeller pressed coconut oil
  • 1 cup einkorn flour freshly ground
  • 2 eggs preferably free range
  • sea salt
  • pepper

Instructions

  1. Pour the coconut oil in a large frying pan and place it on a large burner on the stovetop. Turn the heat to medium.

  2. Crack the eggs in a large bowl and beat lightly with a fork. Sprinkle some sea salt and pepper into the egg mixture and beat once more with the fork.

  3. Sprinkle and evenly distribute the flour onto a large plate.

  4. Dip each fish fillet in the egg mixture and then cover both sides of the fillet with flour by gently dragging it through the flour on the floured plate. Repeat until all the fillets are battered.

  5. Check the temperature of the oil in the frying pan with a candy thermometer. It should be about 325°F/ 163 °C or slighly lower, as it's been heating up while you were battering the fish. Place the battered fillets gently into the hot oil in the pan.

  6. Cook for about 3 minutes and then turn each fillet over with a large stainless steel utensil or wooden tongs (please don't use plastic!). Cook for 3-4 minutes more.

  7. When a knife easily cuts through the center of each fillet like butter, the fish fingers are ready. Don't cook them a moment longer or the fish will get chewy. Remove the fillets from the pan with the tongs and place on a large plate. Cut each fillet lengthwise and then again across the middle to form four fish fingers per fillet. If you used very large fillets, feel free to cut them down making more than four fingers per fillet.

  8. Serve immediately with your choice of vegetables, salad, or soup. These fish fingers taste great alone, but if you are a sauce dipping person, homemade mayo (or this brand of avocado mayo) is amazing slathered on. A little organic mustard and raw honey emulsified together with a fork makes a yummy and fast sauce too.

  9. Refrigerate any leftovers and serve as fish sandwiches for lunch the next day.

Recipe Notes

Feel free to substitute another fresh flour of choice for the einkorn flour as desired.

Alternatively, use homemade breadcrumbs instead of flour if preferred.

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Category: Fish Recipes
Sarah Pope

Sarah Pope MGA has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. She is a summa cum laude graduate in Economics from Furman University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of three books: the bestseller Get Your Fats Straight, Traditional Remedies for Modern Families, and Living Green in an Artificial World.

Her four eBooks Good Diet…Bad Diet, Real Food Fermentation, Ketonomics, and Ancestrally Inspired Dairy-Free Recipes are available for complimentary download via Healthy Home Plus.

Her mission is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.

Sarah was awarded Activist of the Year in 2010 at the International Wise Traditions Conference, subsequently serving on the Board of Directors of the nutrition nonprofit the Weston A. Price Foundation for seven years.

Her work has been covered by numerous independent and major media including USA Today, ABC, and NBC among many others.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (12)

  1. Martha

    Dec 4, 2017 at 12:12 pm

    Thank You!
    Question: how large a pan, or, how deep does the oil need to be to get an accurate temperature reading?
    Again, thank you!

    Reply
    • Sarah

      Dec 5, 2017 at 1:56 pm

      Not very deep. Just a half inch to an inch or so.

  2. Laura P.

    May 11, 2016 at 1:38 pm

    I would like to know if anyone baked this recipe?
    Thanks!

    Reply
  3. Cassandra

    Mar 8, 2016 at 3:28 am

    Delicious! Surprisingly easy to make.Made these for my grandchildren.Thanks!! Sarah

    Reply
  4. Taryn

    Mar 1, 2016 at 2:42 am

    Thanks for this recipe Sarah; I look forward to trying it out because I love fish fingers! I wanted to let you know that this is about the fourth time I have tried “Pinning” one of your posts to Pinterest but each time I get an error saying that the URL is invalid…

    Reply
    • Sarah

      Mar 1, 2016 at 7:40 am

      Yes, the pinterest button is on the fritz … should be hopefully fixed today. Sorry about that!

    • Christie

      Mar 4, 2016 at 2:06 am

      Thanks for the recipe…do you have an egg free version by any chance? My daughter has an intolerance to eggs.

    • Sarah

      Mar 4, 2016 at 5:12 pm

      You can try rolling the fish in this instead of the egg before dusting with flour: https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/video-the-best-baking-substitute-for-eggs/

  5. Rachel

    Feb 27, 2016 at 11:49 pm

    Have you ever tried it with coconut or almond flour? I am wondering if either of these would taste as good as regular flour.

    Reply
    • Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

      Feb 28, 2016 at 9:31 pm

      Yes, I’ve tried it! Here is how I’ve done it in the past … with either chicken or fish: https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/low-carb-fried-chicken

  6. Rick Bradley

    Feb 26, 2016 at 10:45 am

    Can the landlocked use frozen fish successfully?

    Reply
    • Sarah

      Feb 26, 2016 at 4:43 pm

      Yes absolutely! Just be sure there hasn’t been anything added to the fish prior to freezing like preservatives or other chemicals. I’ve seen chemicals commonly added particularly with frozen shrimp. Not sure if it is the same with frozen fish.

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