Flounder

Steamed fish with potatoes get drenched in a flavorful brown butter infused with anchovies and chives for a bistro-like meal that comes together in no time.

Barely cracked peppercorns toasted in generous amounts of brown butter make one of the easiest, tastiest finishers for simply seared fish.

Don’t let fish intimidate you on the grill. Cutting it into wide planks makes it easy to flip.

Simply grilled fish in a foil packet. (Don’t worry if you can’t find turbot. You can use other flatfish such as Dover sole or flounder instead.)

Think of the cucumber as a crunchy and spicy relish that somehow makes fried fish even better. 

This stew might come together quickly, but it gets plenty of backbone from fennel and white wine.

This spinach is great on its own, but paired with a quick-cooking protein like flounder, you have dinner in about 20 minutes.

“This dish was on our opening menu and still makes an appearance whenever we can get fresh skate wings,” says chef Adam Evans. His method also works with skinless turbot, flounder, or sole fillets.

Look for thicker fish fillets, which will give you the ideal breading-to-fish ratio.

Want to build big flavor fast? Jarred marinara gives you a head start. Be sure to doctor it a bit for a homemade taste. Here we use fennel seeds and sliced fennel to serve with flounder.

This baked flounder is so easy, so flavorful, and so ready to land on your dinner table. Pro tip: The recipe works best in summer when tomatoes are ripe and abundant.

This recipe has all the makings for your new favorite classic fish sandwich.

Serve panko-crusted white fish with a piquant relish of cucumbers, fennel, and chiles, kissed with both lime and cilantro.

An easy herbed butter infuses fish and vegetables with rich flavor in this family-friendly dinner.

An elegant Mediterranean-inspired fish dinner with green beans, tomatoes, and olives is just a push of the microwave button away.

Take fried fish, break it up, and douse it with lime juice, Worcestershire sauce, chiles, and cilantro, and you have an incredible jumble of textures and flavors. Because you hack the fish into bits, there's no need to find perfect-for-presentation fillets, so this is a great way to use those that aren't flawless, as long as they're fresh.

Washington, DC's renowned chef-owner of Citronelle has a special relationship with seafood: He was born in Brittany on the northwest coast of France. Chef Michel Richard has been decorated with nearly every cooking award, including the James Beard award, and he is known for combining fresh California ingredients with traditional French cooking. This recipe, a simplified take on a traditional French bouillabaisse, is sure to satisfy.

Parve Todd: To me, gefilte fish out of a jar is an abomination, but my version, basically an interpretation of the French quenelles be brochet, is cheftastic. Choosing between the two is a no-brainer, in my opinion (see Gefilte Fish: Jarred or Fresh? below). I prefer to use rockfish, otherwise known as sea bass, for gefilte fish because it is indigenous to the Chesapeake region. I blend it with pike and flounder, but you could use any combination of the three. Any white, non-oily fish will do for that matter. I've even made them with salmon; the light pink color makes a nice change of pace. It's best to poach the fish balls a day ahead of time so they can rest in their cooking liquid for several hours. They can be eaten cold, but Ellen and I like to serve them warm—they make a great, non-meat brunch entrée.

This is a simple way to prepare whole fish, yet one that few Western cooks have mastered. In the Vietnamese culture, a properly steamed fish is a benchmark for chefs, and those who can't do it right are considered to be bad cooks. A perfectly steamed fish has flesh that is just cooked at the bone, never dry. Typically, whole fish are not served with the liquid in which it was steamed, which is too fishy tasting, and any sauce is added at the end, after the fish has been cooked. In this classic Chinese preparation, the fish is topped with scallions, cilantro and ginger, then doused with hot oil, which releases the flavor of the aromatics into the flesh of the fish.

Because this fish stock freezes well, you can double the recipe; use one batch, and freeze the second one for later use.

Be careful when transferring the fish from the baking dish to the plate—flounder is a fragile fish that falls apart easily.