9 Flounder Recipes for Fin-Tastic Weeknight Meals

Deep golden brown fish fillets on a large serving platter are covered in a creamy, glossy, perfectly emulsified butter sauce, studded with capers and flecked with minced parsley. — [Image: Vicky Wasik].
Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Floundering on the internets for new ways to prepare this delicate white-fleshed flatfish? There's a better way. Here are our nine go-to methods for getting flounder on the table, ranging from simple pan-seared, lemon-kissed treatments like meunière and piccata to battering and deep-frying for sandwiches and tacos.

Sole Meunière

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

This classic preparation is quick, easy, and arguably one of the best ways to serve delicate fillets like flounder.

Sole Meunière
West Lake Soup

Serious Eats / Qi Ai

This comforting soup is often made with ground pork or beef, but we really like using chopped and marinated white fish, which allows the cilantro, white pepper, soy, and rice wine to shine through.

West Lake Soup
Fried Fish Sandwiches With Creamy Slaw and Tartar Sauce

Serious Eats / Qi Ai

Flounder takes especially well to being fried, making it a perfect substitute for cod in this delectable sandwich. The beer-batter coating, made with a combination of flour and cornstarch, is light, airy, and crisp.

Fried Fish Sandwiches With Creamy Slaw and Tartar Sauce
Fish Piccata

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik.

The tender, pan-fried flounder fillets in this recipe are smothered with a creamy caper-studded lemon-butter sauce.

Fish Piccata (Pan-Fried Fish With Butter, Lemon, and Caper Sauce)

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Planked Whitefish With Cilantro-Lime Butter

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

Planking is one of the most foolproof ways to grill fish. The cedar acts as a "baking sheet" of sorts, making the process of transferring the fish on and off the grill a snap while subtly perfuming the fish with woodsy aromas.

Planked Whitefish With Cilantro-Lime Butter
Kung Pao Fish With Dried Chiles and Sichuan Peppercorns

Serious Eats / Shao Z.

Here, chunks of white fish are seasoned with soy sauce and white pepper, then battered, deep-fried, and smothered in a mouth-tingling mixture of stir-fried scallions, garlic, Sichuan peppercorns, and dried chiles.

Kung Pao Fish With Dried Chiles and Sichuan Peppercorns
Grilled Fish in Parchment

Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel

As grilling methods go, fashioning parcels from parchment paper (or, for the more nervous among us, foil) is one of the most convenient and foolproof techniques out there. Lemon and dill sprigs perfume the fish as it steams atop shingled slices of summer squash.

Grilled Fish in Parchment
Crunchy Fried Fish Tacos

Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

There's nothing quite like the combination of warm corn tortillas, freshly fried fish, cabbage, spicy mayo, and pickled onions.

Crunchy Fried Fish Tacos

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Chả Cá, Seared Fish with Turmeric Over Rice Noodles

Serious Eats / Chichi Wang

In Chichi's take on this classic Vietnamese noodle dish, white-fleshed fish fillets like flounder or catfish are marinated in a mixture of buttermilk, turmeric, freshly grated galangal, and savory fish paste. The fillets are briefly seared on both sides and transferred to bowls piled with rice noodles.

Chả Cá, Seared Fish with Turmeric Over Rice Noodles

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