Oats & Seeds Fish Fingers

Good Friday is not far away, which means only one thing……Easter eggs are not far behind!!!  Haha.

On Good Friday, more a traditional custom now for us rather than religious, we tend to abstain from meat and embrace all creatures of the sea. I needn’t harp on about how good fish is for you, and how these days the variety we have available to us is wonderful and leaves us with no excuse not to experiment with cooking fish and seafood…… (well I did harp there, for just a second).

For this healthy fish finger recipe, I’m not really experimenting with fish variety, but I have cooked the fish in a way I had never tried before. Trying to be ever health conscious, these fish fingers are baked rather than fried (no surprise there), but the coating for them is using porridge oats, panko breadcrumbs and seeds. This makes the fish fingers super healthy rather than cooking them in a white breadcrumb coating, not to mention a great texture to the fingers. Also they will keep you filling fuller for longer with the use of oats and seeds. They are so healthy, you can increase the chips on your plate!

I would use any firm fish for these fingers, I am using cod and whiting here, as that’s what my fishmonger had freshest, but skinned salmon or coley would work well here.

These are guilt free fish fingers for the kiddies too, adding some peas and baby potatoes and that’s a real easy meal to please the kids. They can help with the prepping of the fingers too, making them more inclined in eating them when they are cooked.

Makes 12-15 fingers

Ingredients

• 4 fillets of skinned cod
• 50g of panko bread crumbs
• 50g of porridge oats
• 20g of mixed seeds (sesame, sunflower)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 50g of flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
• Low cal spray

Method

1. Cut the cod fillet into finger/goujon size pieces.
2. Put the flour on a plate, the egg in a bowl and mix the breadcrumbs, oats and seeds together, and put in another bowl.
3. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
4. Line a baking sheet with baking/parchment paper and spray with low cal spray.
5. Dip the fingers in the flour, shake off excess, dip in the egg, shake off the excess; and cover in the oaty coating.
6. Place the fingers in a line on the baking sheet.
7. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then turn and bake for a further 5-8 minutes.

(Alternative for Panko Breadcrumbs: If you don’t have panko breadcrumbs, toast a slice of brown bread, and when cool blitz in a mini food chopper)

Sneaky Accompaniment: a quick lime and sweet chilli mayonnaise – add 3 tbsp of low fat mayo, with juice of half a lime, and 1 tbsp of sweet chilli sauce, black pepper)