My wife said that it tasted "restaurant quality", and I definitely agree. I didn't have sake available, so I substituted Chinese cooking wine. Otherwise, I followed the recipe precisely. This is the best tasting fish dish we have ever cooked ourselves, and it took almost no skill to make it. The best tasting butterfish I have ever eaten at a restaurant was served at Blue Ginger in Massachusetts, and I have to say the fish we cooked using this recipe was just as good. We've been using allrecipes.com for many years, but I never registered for an account until now because I wanted to rate this recipe.
One thing I noticed was that we had more marinade available than needed. The black cod we used weighed about 19 ounces. I broke it up into 3 different pieces and used a brush to very thoroughly cover all 3 pieces. There was enough marinade left to cover 1 or 2 more pieces of fish. Also, for reference, we had frozen our fish for a couple weeks before using it and it still came out fabulous when we cooked it.
Black Cod isn't my choice when I cook for clients. Because it's extremely delicate and needs to be served immediately.
But a client saw this and asked that I prepare it for her.
As a trial run I went with the recipe but discovered that it was too sweet. In addition, the concentrated miso paste; even though I used the recommended amount of white miso & the one I chose was sodium lite - it was quite strong.
On my next run, I left out the wine, used only 1 1/2 TBS of brown sugar - wanted to keep the smokiness - included
1 tsp of honey & 1 tsp of white cane sugar, kept the sake and let it simmer - while stirring occassionally - for a bit more than 5 minutes.
Which allowed the three different sugars to begin to caramelize a bit and blend with the miso and sake.
I liked the taste while it cooked. Then when it cooled and I painted the filets to marinate & broil (on low) all the flavors were blending quite well.
When it was time to take them out of oven - I found that each flavor including the fish - for me - now had an opportunity to make an appearance and pop.
Each flavor dovetailed into the previous flavor, as opposed to having one/ two dominant elements.
That's me. Others love the recipe as is . I was just looking for a way to keep the origins while finding a way to make it work for my tastes.
Amazingly delicious. I used coconut sugar instead of brown and hard cider instead of sake and it was out of this world. We'll be buying black cod just to make this recipe. A small amount of fish per person was enough it was so rich in flavor and juiciness. Served it with nubbly chewy red quinoa and fresh salad with asian pears and avocado - perfect.
I found black cod at Trader Joe's and having never tried it or cooked it before I was happy to find such a tasty and easy recipe here. I too used apple cider in place of the sake and Japanese wine as well as coconut sugar in place of the brown sugar. This was wonderful! I frequently cook dinner in two batches because we run a plate over to my elderly dad down the street so I did one broiled as recommended and one at 400 as suggested in one review.... I preferred the broiled version though it did create a lot of smoke. We'll definitely be having this again.
Made this for dinner tonight & it was excellent. Very easy to make. I followed the recipe exactly as written but had to cook it a few minutes extra. My husband loved it too. Will definitely make again and again!
Best cod recipe I've tried. Next time I'm going to bake it at 400 degrees for 15 minutes instead of broiling.
Just finished eating dinner and had to rate this. Absolutely delicious! Followed the recipe exactly as is. This recipe is so simple and fast while tasting like a 5-star restaurant. I just watched my husband go into the kitchen and eat up the left over sauce on the baking sheet. This is going to become a new staple.
