Baked Cod with Seafood Stuffing

Once upon a time I fell in love with seafood stuffing. It was at one of my favorite seafood restaurants – in fact, I think the restaurant became one of my faves BECAUSE of their seafood stuffing! (More about that restaurant in my notes!)

And what IS it about seafood stuffing? You can incorporate so many different kinds of seafood into the stuffing – shrimp, scallops, crab, clams. It’s a personal preference, really. And perhaps you don’t like certain fish or you are allergic to shellfish. No worries. You can make this stuffing without seafood, if you really want to! You can add some sliced mushrooms for some texture and leave it that way. Up to you!

You will find so many variations on seafood stuffing out there. Try this one first. It’s my go-to seafood stuffing, for any fish!

90 minutes/moderate/6 servings

nutrition per serving:

429 calories, 39g protein, 17g carbs, 19g fat, 3g sugar

ingredients

• 3 cod fillets, each cut in half
• 1 sleeve of Ritz crackers, ground up
• 1 cup breadcrumbs (plain or Italian style)
• 1 small yellow onion
• 1 rib of celery, sliced
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 fresh garlic clove, chopped
• 1 cup raw shrimp, cut into bite sized portions
• 1 can (1 lb) of lump crab meat
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), melted
• 1⁄4 cup cooking sherry
• salt and pepper, to taste

directions

Seafood Stuffing:

1. Pour 2 cup of water in a medium sized pot/dutch oven. Add a teaspoon of salt and bring the water to a boil.
2. Add bread crumbs and Ritz crackers, stir to combine and cover the pan.
3. Let cook until the water is absorbed. This shouldn’t take long.
4. In another pan/skillet, caramelize peppers, celery and onion.
5. Add the garlic, mix the veggies together and let cook for another minute or so.
6. Add the veggies to the bread-Ritz mixture and combine well.
7. Add the eggs and melted butter and stir to combine.
8. Stir in the crabmeat and shrimp and let everything cook together for another few minutes. You will see the shrimp start to pink up.
9. Add the sherry and combine.
10. Add salt and pepper to taste.
11. Cover, and let stand 15 minutes.
12. Remove stuffing from the heat and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Set the baking rack to the middle of your oven.

Assembly:

1. Spray the bottom of a shallow baking dish with non-stick spray.
2. Place the cod fillets flat along the bottom of the dish.
3. Spread the seafood stuffing over the top of each fillet.
4. Place the dish in the oven, middle of the oven or a bit higher. You’ll want to brown up the stuffing a bit as it bakes.
5. Bake for 30 minutes.
6. Move the baking dish higher in to oven/put the dish under the broiler for an additional 5-10 minutes to brown the stuffing. WATCH it so you don’t burn it!
7. Remove from the oven and serve with your favorite sides.

notes

First off, I need to give a shout out to one of my favorite restaurants! Saybrook Fish House in Canton, CT has been one of my top 5 favorite restaurants ever since Lou first took me there many moons ago. Their food is exceptional, which includes their seafood stuffing! This recipe reminds me of theirs, for sure. And when our kids were little we started bringing them there. They put brown paper table coverings on the table and put glasses of crayons about so kids can draw on the table! LOVE that idea. Here are 2 of my kids’ drawings from our visits:

But I digress…

I gotta say, the PEPPERS make this stuffing for me. You wouldn’t initially think of adding bell pepper to this, but it really works. And you are thinking “eh, I don’t really like bell peppers” (a la my daughters 😉) Trust me and try using the peppers. Just cut them small and cook them well! The sweet pepper flavor really works in this dish.

Be sure to cook all the veggies until they are well softened before you combine them with the breadcrumb mixture.

One more ingredient that makes this recipe sing to me – SHERRY. You can easily find this in your local store. You can use white wine if you don’t like sherry, but do me a favor and use sherry in this recipe. A splash of this at the end of cooking the stuffing makes things perfect!

And remember, you can use a variety of shellfish in your stuffing. I use crabmeat and shrimp, but add baby scallops and/clams to the mix if you want. There isn’t a wrong combination of these! And I use the cans of lump crabmeat. Easy to use and just delicious.

Back to the white fish. This stuffing would work well with any flaky fish. I used cod here but you can use other flaky fish such as flounder, haddock, halibut or mahi-mahi. You can stuff the flaky fish with the stuffing or just put the stuffing on top of the fish to bake it. And as I ALWAYS say, use fresh ingredients whenever possible. Find a fish market that has fresh, locally caught fish if you can. ALWAYS use fresh products that you like and trust.

And you could just make a big pile of this seafood stuffing and eat it “plain.” Well, it’s not plain, by any means! I ended up having some extra stuffing when I recently made this, so I put the extra stuffing in a small baking dish and baked it along side of the fish dish!

seafood stuffing photo before the final bake:

Make it and eat it. You will not be sorry!