Stuffed bream in the oven

Name: Stuffed bream in the oven
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 90 min
Yield: 2–3 servings
Ingredients: Bream — 1 large fish Rice — 1/4 cup Onion — 3 pcs. Carrot — 1 pc. Butter — 10 g Sunflower oil — 2 tbsp Salt — to taste Ground black pepper — to taste

Published: 04.09.2026

Updated: 04.09.2026

🤤 Здорові рецепти щодня

Cooking time 90 minutes Portions 2–3 servings

Bream has very good meat and a great many small bones — the intermuscular ones, which a fork cannot pick out and boiling does not soften. Because of them a fish that often turns up in the catch gets cooked at home far more rarely than it deserves.

Stuffing solves exactly that problem, and solves it for good. The flesh is taken off the skin and put through the mincer three times — the small bones stay on the blades, ground so fine that you cannot feel them in the forcemeat. The skin with the fins is kept whole, packed with the filling and baked: the dish looks like a whole fish, and you can eat it without looking.

It is not quick work — an hour just to break the fish down. But it is the hour after which children will eat bream, and that is the reason the recipe exists. If the bones are no trouble to you, the same bream is just as good simply baked whole.

The same bream stays whole with lemon tucked into the cuts in juicy bream with lemon in the oven, and goes in undivided in whole baked bream.

Caloric content: 175kcal

Ingredients

Bream — 1 large fish
Rice — 1/4 cup
Onion — 3 pcs.
Carrot — 1 pc.
Butter — 10 g
Sunflower oil — 2 tbsp
Salt — to taste
Ground black pepper — to taste

Prepare the ingredients

Peel and chop the vegetables and sauté them until soft. Boil the rice through in salted water. Rinse the fish and let it dry off.

Clean the bream

Scale the fish, take out the gills and the innards. Do the scaling now, while the skin is still firm on the flesh.

Peel the skin off like a stocking

Make a small cut along the belly and, starting from the tail, carefully draw the skin off, working around the fins — leave those in place.

Make the forcemeat

With scissors cut the backbone through by the head and by the tail, take it out and pick out every bone you can see. Put the flesh through the mincer three times, mix it with the sautéed vegetables, the butter and the rice, then salt and pepper it.

Stuff the fish

Lay the skin out on an oiled baking tray. Heap the filling by the head and the belly and use less of it towards the tail. Fold the skin over and pin the belly together with toothpicks.

Bake

Drizzle the rest of the oil over it so it browns and put it in the oven for 30 minutes at 180 °C.

Notes

The skin comes off from the tail towards the head, like a stocking. The other way round it tears at the fins. Leave the fins on the skin — they hold the shape once the fish has no backbone.
Three passes through the mincer, no fewer. After one pass you can still feel the bones; after two you meet the odd one. The third pass grinds down whatever got through the first two, and it is the one that makes the dish possible.
Boil the rice through beforehand. Raw rice will not be done in half an hour and will stay hard — inside the fish it has neither the moisture nor the time.
Heap the filling by the head and the belly, and use less of it towards the tail. That way the fish keeps its natural shape; packed evenly it looks like a sausage.
Take the toothpicks out before serving. A small thing that gets forgotten, and the bone count in this dish is exactly zero — no sense putting them back in as wood.
Scale the fish before you take the skin off. Afterwards the body goes soft and scaling it is awkward.

Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.