This Elegant (and Buttery!) French Fish Dinner Comes Together in Just 10 Minutes

When you think of an effortless, impressive weeknight dinner I bet the first dish that jumps into your head is trout almondine, right? Okay, probably not, but it should be. It’s a recipe that’s incredibly easy to prepare, takes just minutes to cook, and with the right technique, is impressive every time. 

Trout almondine stems from amandine, the French term meaning “prepared or served with almonds.” In French cuisine, amandine is typically made with Dover sole, but it's expensive and can be difficult to find. Here in the US, particularly in New Orleans Creole cuisine, the amandine method became popular with more widely available speckled trout, although any thin white-fleshed fish will work in this recipe. During the 1960s, the amandine technique spread from New Orleans to restaurants throughout the United States, where they continued to prepare it with trout while extending the almond treatment to even more foods like green beans, flounder, and scallops.

Amandine preparation is a variation of the classic à la meunière, where a thin protein, often fish, is topped in a lemony browned butter pan sauce. It traditionally starts with dredging the seasoned fish in flour, browning it in a skillet, transferring the cooked fish to serving dishes and spooning the rich browned butter sauce, along with toasted almonds, on top. The fish, sauce, and almonds are all prepared in one skillet and the result is tender, flaky fish swimming in the most heavenly, nutty butter sauce. It’s so aromatic, your neighbors a few doors down may even smell it. Here is how to perfect it at home.

The Secrets to Well-Cooked Thin Fish Fillets

The primary goal of pan-frying the fish for trout almondine is to achieve a crisped, lightly golden exterior at the same time as the interior of the fish cooks. You want gorgeous, perfectly intact fillets while avoiding overcooking the fish or having it stick to the pan. The first way to guarantee great results is to lightly dredge the fish in a starch before cooking. Traditional amondine and à la meuniere cooking methods dredge the seasoned fish in flour before cooking. This provides a dry, starchy exterior that browns more rapidly than the fish itself. 

Flour works well here, but I find it can sometimes clump on the fish and remain mushy, even when the fish is well browned and properly cooked. To avoid this, I prefer to dredge the fillets in cornstarch. Once cooked, the cornstarch creates a much lighter, crispier coating on the thin fillets. I’ll admit that the fillets will not brown as much as when they are coated in flour (since cornstarch lacks the browning proteins all-purpose flour has), but the fish still takes on an appealing light golden color, and I think the benefits of the crisp texture outweigh the slight lack of browning it provides. And truth be told, once the fish is doused in the browned butter and almond sauce, the difference is mostly unnoticeable.

The thin, lean trout fillets used in this recipe are notoriously tricky to pan sear as they can stick to a pan and break easily. The best way to avoid this is to grab a nonstick skillet. If you have a very well-seasoned cast iron skillet or carbon steel skillet, you can use that instead, but if you have any question about the level of seasoning your cast iron has, it’s probably best to just use a nonstick skillet instead.

I start the fish skin-side down, and use the fish cooking technique of gently pressing them into the skillet at the start of cooking. This keeps them flat and in good contact with the pan, ensuring more even cooking. Within just a few minutes, the skin will crisp and turn lightly brown; once the flesh is opaque about halfway up the sides of each fillet, they’re ready to flip. Flip them carefully—two large spatulas come in handy here to gently lay them down without breaking—and continue cooking until the fillets are just opaque throughout.

Building the Sauce

Browning butter and toasting almonds are two cooking techniques that get a bad rap for being fussy and easy to burn. But if you’re swirling the skillet and stirring constantly, there’s no need to fear burning them.

Maybe the biggest technical note for getting perfectly browned butter and toasted almonds at the same time has to do with the timing: It's best to give the butter a jump start in the skillet, cooking it until the the milk solids have turned a light golden color and you just start to smell that toasty browned-butter aroma. As soon as this starts, toss the sliced almonds into the pan; this way, the almonds should just be reaching the perfect toasted-nut state at the same time the butter is reaching its deeper hazelnut color.

Once everything is well browned, immediately remove the skillet from the heat and finish the sauce with lemon juice and zest along with some parsley As you swirl these ingredients into the skillet, the butter will cool down and the risk of carry-over cooking and of burning will decrease with it.

All that’s left is spooning the crunchy almonds and browned butter sauce over the fish. It’s the easy weeknight dinner you likely didn’t know you needed, but maybe now will keep front-of-mind.