Baked Cod With Thai Labb Seasoning

Baked Cod With Thai Laab Seasoning

It's always a good idea to check the sale freezer of the grocery store for seafood marked down to a reasonable price.  The thing about fish is that you don't take chances with it being bad.  The good news there is that supermarkets know the risk and give themselves some cushion.  My personal rule of thumb is, "When in Doubt, Throw it Out."  I learned it when in college nutrition class.  The good news is that light fish fillets like cod are super fast and easy to make.

Eating Seafood Without Spending Too Much Time or Money

This year has been the year I have really transformed into a foodie.  In the process,  I have refined my speed and efficiency significantly experimenting with a lot of fish ingredients.  I have found that you can grab a couple of fish fillets at the market and have a semi-fancy dinner in around 30 minutes with minimal effort.

These large cod fillets were on sale for $2.50 each.     I opened our Thai pantry and looked for some ingredients that we could cook with the cod fillets, and found the LABB and NAMTOK seasoning mix that we used for the Waterfall pork.  I asked Mod if we could use it to season the fish, and I thought that was a brilliant idea.  We rubbed the LABB seasoning on the cod fillets and baked it they way most typical cod fillets are baked.

The cool thing about a baked meat recipe is that you just throw some ingredients together and put it in the oven with a timer.  You do whatever else you have to get done like pack for the weekend excursion.

Buying Sustainable Fish

My conscience always feels better when I knew I took the simple step of making sure the fish I am buying is procured sustainably.  The best bet is to buy from stores that always pay attention to this so you don't have to think about it.  Sometimes though, you find a deal like I did and have to check.  Here is the place to look it up.  The Monterrey Bay Aquarium has built a beautiful app to match their beautiful aquarium and make sure that we don't ruin the beauty that makes life worthwhile.  🙂  https://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-recommendations/groups/cod/overview.

The overview at the time of this writting generally recommends buying cod farmed in the north atlantic area or fished from the north pacific area.   If you ask me I am going for the wild caught ones from the Pacific due to antibiotic use in some farms.   You can generally find such cod at more consciencous stores like Whole Foods Markets.  I will do a follow up post on the good and bad, mostly bad, of antibiotics in food.

Cod Fisherman

Preparation

Baking is usually one of the healthiest and easiest way to cook anything.  There is no fancy trick or tip for cooking the "Baked Cod with Thai Labb Seasoning Mix" at all.  All I did was preheat the oven to 400 Fahrenheit degrees while I was preparing the Cod fillets.

Laab Cod Rub

Spray a cooking sheet with olive oil spray.  Rub the Cod fillet with LABB seasoning mix and place them on the cooking sheet.   I also threw some sliced shallots and shrimp in with it to use as garnish since we would be taking photos.  If we were doing this for guests we would have also worried about having something for garnish.  I sprayed the top of the filet with olive oil too and checked on it occasionally.  We were afraid to flip the fish as fish is so light and flaky it tends to fall apart and it turned out fine.

Laab Cod Filet

Let them cooked 35 minutes.   In the meantime, you can get s**t done.    We served them with Uncle Ben Brown rice and wild whole grain rice with lime juice on top and threw some shrimp and cilantro on top for garnish.

Baked Laab Cod

For more flavor you could also add some garlic butter made by heating some olive oil butter with chopped garlic until melted in the microwave.  We didn't think it needed it but like just having available for whoever wants it.

laab cod with garlic butter

Nutritional Value

Chances are when you think of cod you think of cod liver oil.  It has been used for a very long time for its vitamins.  Cod is one of the cold water fatty fish that is recommended for its omega fatty acids.  It does not have as much omega fatty acids as salmon but it also has significantly less calories than salmon.

Heavy metal poisoning and other chemicals are known to accumulate in cod so it is suggested that you only eat cod occasionally.  A good rule of thumb is to eat the large deep water fish only occasionally.  There are specific recommendations for each type of fish but for us it's safe to say we won't eat cod again for a good while.  We tend to circle through a lot of variety as a general rule for healthy eating.   Variety is the spice of life so enjoy check out our other categories.      Thanks for checking us out and please follow us on social media for more fun or comment to help shape our blog.

If you like the way the laab seasoning tastes you will also like this recipe.

Easy Waterfall Pork (หมูน้ำตก)

If you like fish you may like this recipe.

Roasted Thai Chili Lime Fish