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Fish

White fish

Lean, delicate and quick — the food most likely to be overcooked by somebody being careful.

What it does in fast-moving hot air

White fish is around eighty per cent water held in short muscle fibres with very little connective tissue, so it needs almost no time and has no margin at all. The moment the fibres contract, the water is expelled and the fillet goes from translucent to chalky. It also has no fat to buffer the surface, so hot dry air dries the outside before the inside is warm — which is why nearly every published time for it is under fifteen minutes and why the flake test matters more than the clock.

Why the cut matters

Cod, haddock and their relatives are treated as one food here because the cooking problem is identical across them and no manufacturer chart read this sprint distinguishes between them either. A thick loin and a thin tail piece are a much bigger difference than cod against haddock, which is why the form record works in thickness.

Cooking pages

  • White fish fillet — Eight to twelve minutes at 180°C, or ten at 200°C for a thick loin. No margin either way.
  • Whole fish — Fifteen to twenty minutes for a 300-400g fish, and the size that fits is the real constraint.

There is deliberately no cooking time on this page. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. That is what the pages above are for.