Grilled Fish Tacos

I guess I’m on a celebrity chef kick.

Bryan loves fish tacos.  It’s one of his favorites foods, really.  While he was in Mexico on a church missions trip back in high school, he and his friends ate dozens of fish tacos from street vendors every day.  It was so delicious, and you could get three tacos for a dollar!

Then all the kids came back to America and suffered digestive problems for like a month.

Amazingly, that has not turned Bryan off of fish tacos at all (you really would expect that it would!).  Instead, he still loves them, and often laments that you can’t get good ones in Boston.

I have always shied away from trying fish tacos because it involves deep frying at home, which I was reluctant to do.  So, when I stumbled upon this simpler Bobby Flay recipe, I thought I would give it a try.  It uses grilled fish instead, marinated in lime juice, ancho chili powder, and cilantro.

Interestingly enough, within the same week (because I had so many leftover taco garnishes), I ended up making fried fish tacos as well.  I’ll be posting on those soon, as well as which one we liked better.  Stay tuned!

Grilled Fish Tacos
For the recipe in a nice, printable format, I’d just use the Food Network one.  I basically followed it to the letter.


Fish
1 pound white flaky fish, such as mahi mahi or orata

Marinade
1/4 cup canola oil
1 lime, juiced
1 tablespoons ancho chili powder (I used regular chili powder)
1 jalapeno, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
8 flour tortillas

Garnish
Shredded white cabbage
Hot sauce
Crema or sour cream
Thinly sliced red onion
Thinly sliced green onion
Chopped cilantro leaves
Smoky homemade tomato salsa

Marinate the fish in the “marinade” for about 20 minutes.  Then grill (I had to use a grill pan in my urban condo, which worked out fine).

One major mistake I made was trying to make this with turbot, a very soft fish.  The soft fish ends up breaking apart while grilling.  Although it still tasted pretty good, it would have been nicer if the fish had been a firmer fish.  I learned that lesson and applied it to the fried fish tacos, which I’ll share later this week.

I did make two extra “toppings” to go with the fish tacos.  Pico de gallo (because I love fresh tomatoes) and a creamy chili sauce. One of my guests mentioned that Rubios in California has this spicy cream sauce.  Even though I had never tried it before, I decided to try to make something similar.

It was delicious!  Click here for that spicy mayo sauce recipe.

Oh, and click here for the pico de gallo recipe.

Update: here’s an awesome guacamole recipe that would work too!

Enjoy!!  nom nom nom . . .

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