Parchment Baked Grouper

I’ve been craving fish for a while, so I decided to pick up some grouper. We had some zucchini and roma tomatoes that were getting a little ripe, so I wanted to incorporate them into the dish as well. As part of our attempt to eat healthier, I decided to bake everything. I ran across a recipe from Steamy Kitchen that included a helpful YouTube tutorial on how to steam fish and vegetables in parchment paper, so I thought I’d give it a try. It was a huge success.

I strayed from the original recipe a little. Here’s everything you need:

Parchment Baked Grouper

• 1 pound grouper
• 1 zucchini, sliced
• 2 roma tomatoes, sliced
• 1 can quartered artichoke hearts, rinsed
• 2 tablespoons butter, divided
• 4 tablespoons white wine, divided
• 2-4 sprigs fresh rosemary
• juice from 1 lemon
• salt, pepper and cajun spices to taste

There’s not much to this recipe. Preheat the oven to 450°. Rinse the artichoke hearts and slice the zucchini and tomatoes.

Tear two pieces of parchment paper into 18 inch squares. If you don’t have any parchment paper, just use foil instead. Lay two sprigs of rosemary in the center of the paper. Season the fish with salt, pepper, and some Tony Chachere’s and place it atop the rosemary. Chachere’s is to the deep south what Old Bay is to the mid-atlantic. You can get run out of town for cooking seafood without it.

Place the vegetables on top of the fish and season with a little more salt and pepper. Finally, place a tablespoon of butter atop each stack of vegetables. Fold the parchment paper, making sure to overlap the seams and end pieces so no liquid will leak out. I drafted the wife for this maneuver. She pretty much made the whole meal.

Once the parchment paper has creased, gently unwrap it and divide the lemon juice and white wine between the two packets. Fold the paper again to seal in the liquid. It might seem like the edges will unwrap during the cooking process, but they won’t. Bake for about 20 minutes. Let the packets cool for a couple of minutes and then gently unfold the paper to release the steam.

This meal exceeded my expectations. I usually think of steamed foods as being bland and mushy. This dish made me rethink that stereotype. We’ll make this again, and soon.