Today I’m participating in the Ultimate blog Swap. You’ll find me posting over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers about how we roadschool (that’s Simple Homemaker lingo for homeschooling on the road), and I’m excited to welcome Amanda from Coping with Frugality at the Simple Homemaker.
Pouch Cooking: Baking Fish in Foil
I love all types of cooking–grilling, baking, fresh food. There is one cooking method that is fast, nutritious, delicious, low-mess, infinitely adaptable, and darn tasty. What is it? Pouch cooking!
Cooking in a pouch is a remarkably simple method capable of producing remarkably complex aromas and flavors. How does it work? Well, if you apply enough heat to food, the moisture inside will be released as steam, right? The steam usually just drifts away, taking a lot of heat with it. But placing food in a pouch is, well, kind of like getting in a small tent on a warm day, okay? Instead of evaporating, that moisture and the heat is trapped right up against the food, cooking it very, very quickly. And since the aromas, the flavors, the essence of the food is captured, fish tastes more like fish, chicken tastes more like chicken, and I suppose, given enough time, I would even taste more like me.
Here is my basic strategy for pouch cooking. I usually pick a meat, this time grouper. Then I build upon that with vegetables. There are a lot of vegetables that would work well with this recipe for baking fish in foil, but this time I picked dried mushrooms, zucchini, and jalapenos. Next is the starch. I love using ramen-style noodles. They are inexpensive, super easy, and taste great in this recipe! Moving on to the aromatics, I never go more than two. This time I kept it simple with lime rind (using lime juice in the sauce as well). Seasonings? Anything goes, but I like to keep things simple. We’ll go with salt and black pepper.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Divide ramen noodles evenly in the center of each of 4 pieces of aluminum foil. Stack the following ingredients on top of noodles, in this order: fish, mushrooms, zucchini, jalapenos, lime zest, salt and pepper.
Pull the sides and corners of the foil up to form a small basket shape, leaving an opening at the top to pour in liquid.
In small bowl, combine vegetable broth, mirin or cider vinegar, soy sauce, lime juice, and sesame oil. Distribute liquid evenly among packs. Press foil together, leaving a small opening to allow steam to escape. Place on cookie sheet and bake in oven for 15 minutes. Serve immediately.
Ingredients for Baking Fish in Foil
2 packages Ramen noodles
1 cup dried mushrooms, chopped
4 – 4 oz grouper filets
1 cup chopped zucchini
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 quart vegetable broth
1/2 cup mirin or cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
4 teaspoons sesame oil
Zest and juice from 2 limes
Print the pouch cooking instructions for baking fish in foil here:
- 2 packages Ramen noodles
- 1 cup dried mushrooms, chopped
- 4 – 4 oz grouper filets
- 1 cup chopped zucchini
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 quart vegetable broth
- ½ cup mirin or cider vinegar
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- 4 teaspoons sesame oil
- Zest and juice from 2 limes
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Divide ramen noodles evenly in the center of each of 4 pieces of aluminum foil.
- Stack the following ingredients on top of noodles, in this order: fish, mushrooms, zucchini, jalapenos, lime zest, salt and pepper.
- Pull the sides and corners of the foil up to form a small basket shape, leaving an opening at the top to pour in liquid.
- In small bowl, combine vegetable broth, mirin or cider vinegar, soy sauce, lime juice, and sesame oil. Distribute liquid evenly among packs.
- Press foil together, leaving a small opening to allow steam to escape.
- Place on cookie sheet and bake in oven for 15 minutes. Serve immediately.
Did you try this recipe for baking fish in foil? Please share your experience and variations on pouch cooking in the comments below, and rate the recipe!
Visit Life Your Way to see all of the Ultimate blog Swap participants.
Wow this looks delicious!!
I tried to subscribe via RSS and your link isn’t working?
Thanks, Nikki! RSS only works through Firefox and Windows unless you add the RSS Subscriptions Reader Extension to your Chrome toolbar. Here is the link:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd
Just hit “Add to Chrome Toolbar” (I forgot the exact words, but it’s a big blue box…can’t miss it. That should solve the problem.
Thanks for letting me know! I really appreciate it. It forced me to research it instead of continue to ignore the issue, which was my previous approach.
You’re probably one of those wonderful people that lets a person know when her skirt is caught in her skivies, aren’t you? 
I’ve never done any pouch cooking. I think I’m going to try it – that looks great.
These sound delicious, and I love how there’s no pots or pans to clean afterward! A tip on getting bones out of fish: lay it over an upside down bowl and run your hands on it to find the tiny bones, then pull them out with tweezers.
I just wanted to give you a shout out – your blog looks really good and I like the way your recipe was formatted – easy to read for a home cook. I haven’t tried pouch cooking in a couple years, but I think I have an Asian Paper Chicken recipe I should revisit.
Anyhow, I look forward to reading more about your cooking ideas. Kindest Regards,
Jade
I like how about half of this blog is taken word for word from one of Alton Browns “good eats” episodes but you failed to credit him for the idea and the recipe…. Try writing your own work.
Thanks for the heads up on this, Andrew. I ran it through Copyscape and, while there are several significant differences between this recipe and the recipe from Alton’s site, making it a completely different and legally original recipe (must change 10% of recipe to make it one’s own), you are correct that some of the steps are copied almost word for word. To me, that is unacceptable.
While this is a guest post, it is my responsibility to assure that everything on The Simple Homemaker is unique and not copied. I don’t consider this a copy, but it is definitely too similar to stay up as posted. I am changing the offending steps immediately, and crediting Alton Brown.
Again, thank you for pointing this out…and, by the way, my own work is never plagiarized…ever…never ever ever.
And I will take steps to ensure that future guest writers follow the same never ever principle I have.
very nice thank you so much =)