Baja Fish Tacos Recipe White Sauce
If you're anything like me and are a huge fish taco fan, I've got an incredible recipe. We're gonna be making Baja fish tacos, I'm gonna top it off with some cabbages, little salsa, and a delicious Chipotle mayo. It is amazing. If you search for Baja fish tacos, you are gonna find several different variations, so let me start by saying, this is gonna be my take, I like to keep things as close to the original as possible.
So here go, we're gonna start off with a little prep, making that mayo, sound good? Let's cook. I've got a food processor, which I'm gonna add some mayonnaise too, but don't worry if you don't have one, you can chop up all the ingredients and mix it together, it will be totally fine. Go ahead and add in a garlic clove, you could do two if you want a little more kick. I've got a Chipotle pepper and some of the adobo sauce. If you really like heat, add one more of those Chipotles, you'll absolutely love it.
Now to cut back on some of that heat, I've got some lime juice. Go ahead and squeeze the juice of one full lime in there. Add the lid to that food processor, then I'm gonna pulse it at high speed. Really, all you're trying to do here is to get that Chipotle pepper and garlic chopped up, get all of those flavors and ingredients infused. Once it is done, go ahead and add it to the refrigerator 'til we need it. Just like anything when I'm cooking, I make extra, and it's because this salsa's super good and it will go awesome on a bunch of other stuff. Honestly, you put it on a tortilla chip and eat it, it is amazing.
Now let's hit that salsa. I've got some Roma tomatoes here but if you have some vine-ripes or some five by sixes, please use them, whatever's fresh, whatever's in season, whatever's on sale. I'm gonna slice off the ends and the outside of the Roma tomato, because I don't want any seeds in my salsa. Then go ahead and small to medium dice up each of these little tomato sides. Yes, I've got quite a bit of salsa here, but I love eating it all week long. Dip some chips in there, add it to some other stuff, it's absolutely delicious. Next, I've got a sweet onion. which I'm going to small dice as well. You could also use yellow onion or red onion. Again, it's all about what do you have in your cabinet.
We're gonna add it again right to the tomatoes in a medium-size bowl. Now what we're gonna do is hit it up with a good amount of fresh chopped cilantro, better known as fresh coriander. Now I'm gonna squeeze the juice of one lemon, and like always, I hold a hand below to catch all of those seeds and let the juice sort of run-down in between my fingers. Just like you see here, this is great. Then season it up well with a little bit of sea salt, fresh cracked black pepper. And grab a big spoon, and then what you wanna do is mix all of these ingredients together. You can take a bite of it now and it's delicious, but if you wait a little bit for some of those flavors to come out, oh my gosh, so good. Hit it in the fridge 'til it's time to use it. So if you noticed when I made this, I did not put any jalapenos or serrano peppers in there, and the reason I didn't is that that Chipotle mayo is gonna provide enough kick.
However, if you love spice, definitely put those peppers into this salsa. Or if you're looking for another kind of cool balance, don't put Chipotle peppers in that mayo, put some avocados in that mayo, then put the jalapenos in the salsa. Then you have an avocado crema with a pico de gallo, oh, I could go on for days, it would be amazing. Regardless, we've got a little bit more prep to go. Let's get to it. So I've got a big head of green cabbage, I'm just gonna slice it in half. Now what you wanna do is remove that core, so kind of like slicing in a wedge-type shape, get that core out of there, it's really bitter. Slice it again in half, so what we have is a quarter of a head of cabbage, and them on a mandolin I'm just gonna thinly slice this. If you've got some awesome knife skills or even wanna get practice, you can absolutely do this by hand. Go ahead and set it to the side 'til it's time to plate up.
Let me stop and say this. You don't have green cabbage, you could absolutely use red cabbage. I'm probably gonna use a bit of both because I love the color combination, and I think red cabbage has a little bit more sweetness to it. That's just me, you do you. Now for the fish. I picked up some fresh halibut that was on sale. It looks perfect, it smells absolutely amazing. It's very firm to the touch, extremely delicious, especially in these fish tacos. But we need to cut 'em down, because if I put this big old hunk of fish in the fryer and try put it in a taco, it would look pretty goofy. So I'm just simply cutting the six-ounce filets into thirds, just like you see here. You could cut it down even more. if you wanted even small pieces, into fourths. Go ahead and set them to the side now. And before we get into the batter, I wanna say to you all that you can absolutely use different fish.
You can use sea bass... And before we get into making the better, let me tell you this, you can absolutely use a different fish than this halibut. You can use cod, you can use sea bass, you could even use Mahi. If you wanna use tilapia, are not a big tilapia fan, 'cause it's all farm-raised, but even if you have it in the freezer and you just need to get rid of it, can absolutely use it here. Now for the batter. In a large bowl, I'm gonna add in some all-purpose flour, next followed up with some cornstarch. This is gonna help make the batter nice and light and fluffy. Then I've got a nice Mexican beer. I'm gonna be using Dos Equis Amber. Any good Mexican beer will be fantastic in this batter. And at this point, you want to season it very very well with sea salt and pepper. Remember, this batter is what's going to flavor up your fish, so again, season it super well. Go ahead and give it a whisk, should be a little bit thick, almost like a pancake batter. Really, it's like a tempura batter.
Now head over to your cooktop. I've got a pot of oil. if you have a deep fryer, fantastic, too. I wanna get it to right around 350 degrees. Now to batter up. Add one of those small fish filets right to the batter. We wanna get it completely coated on all sides. Also, we really need to cook these in batches, so I can maybe four to five at a time in this little pot. Go ahead and add 'em in there. As soon as they hit the oil, it'll start to harden up, so don't worry about them sticking if they get too close. But just to show you how they look, I'm only gonna cook two here at this time. Once they become golden brown, which takes in between four and five minutes, just like you see here, we're gonna drain them off on some paper towels that I've lined onto parchment paper. If you have a plate, totally fine.
Let's set 'em aside. And then one last thing, I've got some corn tortillas. I've got a great recipe on my website for homemade if you want. If not, we need to reheat these and get these a nice little toast. So over a high burner, maybe 15 to 20 seconds on each side, this really brings out a ton of flavor and softens them up a even more. Now let's head over to our countertop. Comies, I say it all the time. It's about understanding these fundamental techniques. How to put 'em into practice so that all of your homemade food from scratch will always always taste better. It's about understanding flavor profiles, how to compliment some sweet with some spicy with a little bit of savory mixed in, so when it comes together, it's the most amazing fish taco you've ever had, better than any restaurant, better than any grocery store. You do this,
I promise you, your stuff, moving forward, is gonna be so much better. So now let's plate up, in slow-mo. I've been eating tacos for a long time, but I really love the concept of doubling up those corn tortilla shells. It's just so much better, adds a lot of flavor, and will help hold everything together. Now add one of those long fish filet that's been fried in beer batter, and I did both cabbages, I'm not gonna lie, I've got red and green. You could use one or the other or both, like I told you earlier. Hit it with a little bit of that salsa, get that all over, 'cause it is so delicious. Then drizzle on some of that Chipotle mayo. Yes, I put it in a squeeze bottle. You can absolutely just drizzle it on with a spoon. And I'm gonna fish it off with just a little bit of fresh cilantro leaves, just to give it a little more color, a little bit more deliciousness, and dang, check out these beauties. I made these tacos from start to finish in under 45 minutes. That's the sauce, that's the prep for the salsa, that's battering up the fish. You can do this! I promise, you'll love it. Be sure to like this video, subscribe to my channel. Check out this video, it is super good! I'll see you on there.
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