Perch in the oven

Perch gets released more often than it gets cooked: the scales are small and set tight, the dorsal fin still pricks you even on a dead fish, and there isn't much meat on a small perch. In the oven that hassle disappears — the fish isn't filleted, it's laid whole on a bed of onion.

The skin isn't removed, only the scales are. The skin holds the juice in and keeps the lean meat from drying out over forty minutes at 180 °C; take it off before baking, and you leave the fillet exposed to dry heat. The crosswise cuts aren't for looks: through them, salt and sauce reach the bone, and the thick back has time to cook through in the same forty minutes as the belly.

The onion under the fish is part of the cooking method, not a garnish for the finished dish. It releases moisture from below, so the perch cooks half in steam rather than on a scorching tray. That's why it's cut into half rings and laid in an unbroken layer: in any gaps, the fish sits directly on the metal and dries out there.

Perch and pike come out of the same oven at nearly the same time, so try a quick pike recipe baked the same way next. Prefer a firmer fillet under a crust instead? pike-perch with carrot, onion and cheese uses the identical trick on a different fish.

Caloric content: 500kcal

Notes

• Cut off the dorsal fin with scissors before cleaning. A perch's spines are hard and angled backward, and the scales come off from tail to head — your hand runs straight into them, and doing this once the fish is wet is awkward.
• Soy sauce is already salty. Thirty milliliters for two fish add more salt than you would think, so go easy on salting the perch separately.
• Grate the garlic for the sauce. Sliced cloves stay sitting on top and turn black and bitter after forty minutes; grated garlic spreads through the oil and soy sauce and clings to the fish along with it.
• Don't salt the onion. Salt and soy sauce will run down onto it from the fish on their own, while onion salted separately gives up all its moisture in the first quarter hour and spends the rest of the time drying out on the tray.
• The perch is done when the meat pulls away from the spine. Don't go by the crust: under soy sauce it darkens long before the fish is actually ready.

Questions and answers

Do you need to remove the skin from perch?

No. The scales come off, the skin stays on — it holds in the juice and keeps the shape. Without it, lean perch turns dry after forty minutes in the oven.

How long do you bake perch in the oven?

Forty minutes at 180 °C for a fish serving two. The exact time depends on how thick the back is, so check doneness near the spine rather than by the clock.

What are the crosswise cuts for?

So salt and sauce reach the bone, and the thick part cooks through along with the thin one. Cut down to the spine, but not through it.

Can you bake perch without onion?

You can, but then you need foil or at least some oil on the tray: the onion here isn't a garnish but a source of moisture, and without it lean perch cooks on bare, dry metal.