A childhood favorite gets a healthy makeover. Baked Fish Sticks with Homemade Tartar Sauce are oven-baked and made with real food ingredients. They’re gluten-free, paleo and Whole30-friendly.
This post was created in partnership with our friends at King Arthur Flour.
Not your average fish stick.
As I think back to my childhood meals, one meal that comes to my mind consists of fish sticks (from the freezer), peas and carrots (from the freezer) and some kind of fruit (likely from a can). My guess is that this meal might also be familiar to you! So today, I’m sharing a recipe for Baked Fish Sticks. But instead of them coming in a yellow or blue box from the freezer section of the grocery store, I’m making them with real food ingredients. Because that’s how we roll.
Made with real food ingredients including King Arthur Almond Flour.
While yes, it’s much easier to buy a box of frozen fish sticks and just pop them in the oven…our mission is to show you that some of our favorite convenience foods can be made pretty darn simply with real food ingredients. Ingredients that do the body good. Baked Fish Sticks are made with just a few ingredients including King Arthur Almond Flour and Coconut Flour, whole eggs, seasonings, and white fish fillets. You could also use King Arthur’s NEW Paleo Baking Flour, a perfect blend of almond, cassava, and coconut flour. This recipe is gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, paleo and Whole30-friendly!
King Arthur’s Almond Flour is milled from blanched whole almonds. It has a super fine texture and full of protein, fiber, and good fats. It makes for a fabulous grain-free flour option in everything from scones to muffins to cookies to waffles for a rich, buttery flavor. Almond flour is also a perfect certified gluten-free substitute for bread crumbs in savory dishes like these Baked Fish Sticks.
A tasty lunch or dinner option that will bring you back to your childhood days!
A part of my job that gets me excited is choosing some of my favorite childhood meals or comfort foods and giving them a healthy makeover. This isn’t always an easy task to do and some meals/recipes I leave as is because they’re just too good to be messed with, but thanks to King Arthur Flour, I set out on a mission during my maternity leave to create a recipe for Baked Fish Sticks.
You’ll find that this recipe is easy to make, full of protein and healthy fats, and with all of the dipping and dunking, it’s fun for kids to get involved, too. In addition, these Baked Fish Sticks reheat nicely, so leftovers make for a great next day’s meal. I like to reheat them in the oven set at 350ºF to really crisp them up again. For a well-balanced meal, I serve them with a side of veggies (cooked or raw), fresh fruit for lunch or sweet potato fries for dinner and you can’t forget the tartar sauce for dipping. Speaking of tartar sauce…
Dip ’em in our easy Homemade Tartar Sauce.
In the recipe below, I also include my Homemade Tartar Sauce recipe. Now like the fish sticks, there are pre-made tartar sauces you can very easily buy from the grocery store, but I will say that making your own is pretty simple to do. Plus, you know exactly what goes into it, and it’s much better tasting in my opinion! With that said, I recommend you take 5 minutes of your time to whip up a batch of Homemade Tartar Sauce.
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Baked Fish Sticks with Tartar Sauce
Ingredients
For the Fish Sticks:
- Olive oil or avocado oil cooking spray
- 1 lb. cod fillets or white fish of choice, cut into 2–2 1/2 inch long pieces about ~½-¾ inch thick
- 2 whole eggs
- 1 cup King Arthur Almond Flour (86g grams)
- 2 Tbsp. King Arthur Coconut Flour (16 grams)
- 1½ tsp. garlic powder
- 1½ tsp. onion powder
- 1 tsp. sweet or smoked paprika
- 1 tsp. salt
- ½ tsp. black pepper
For the Homemade Tartar Sauce:
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- 3 Tbsp. finely chopped dill pickles
- 2 tsp. fresh dill or ¾ tsp. dried dill
- 1 Tbsp. lemon juice, more to taste
- ¼ tsp. garlic powder
- Pinch of black pepper
- 1 tsp. honey or maple syrup (optional, adds a touch of sweetness. Omit for Whole30)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spray parchment with cooking spray.
- Prepare the fish. With a paper towel, pat the fish to absorb the liquid and place it on a plate.
- In a shallow dish, whisk the eggs.
- In another shallow dish, combine the flour, garlic, onion, paprika, salt, and pepper.
- Make an assembly line with the ingredients in this order. Fish, egg wash, breading and prepared pan.
- Dunk the fish pieces into the egg wash, let excess egg drip off before coating the fish generously with breading – press the breading onto the fish to make sure it sticks and then place on the pan. Repeat until all of the fish is used up.
- Spray the breaded fish sticks with a generous amount of cooking spray. This will help them brown and crisp.
- Bake for 8 minutes. Flip carefully, spray again with cooking oil and bake for another 5-6 minutes. For extra crisp, broil for 1-2 minutes (watch closely as almond flour burns easily).
- While fish sticks are in the oven, make the homemade tartar sauce by combining and mixing all of the tartar sauce ingredients in a small bowl. Place in the fridge until ready to serve.
- When fish sticks are done baking, remove from the oven and serve warm with tartar sauce and lemon wedges.
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Nutrition Information
- Serving Size: 1/6 of recipe + 2 Tbsp. Tartar Sauce
- Calories: 305
- Fat: 25g
- Sodium: 900mg
- Carbohydrate: 7g
- (Fiber: 3g
- Sugar: 2g)
- Protein: 18g
Dietary
I can’t wait for you to give this recipe a try! Comment below if you do. We love hearing from you!
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This post was made possible by our friends at King Arthur Flour. Although we received compensation for this post, the opinions expressed here are – as always – 100% our own. Thank you for supporting the great companies we work with thereby allowing us to continue creating great recipes and content for you.
Photo Credit: The photos in this blog post were taken by Jess of Plays Well with Butter.
My toddler gobbled these up and he never eats fish !
Sounds like a victory, Laura!
Help! The food allergies/sensitivities in our house are so frustrating because we are all different so the list has gotten longer. Any recommendations on making these egg/dairy/nut free?
Hi Katie, we hear ya on that! This recipe is already dairy free. You can make it egg free by coating the fish in a vegan mayo instead of egg to get the coating to stick (and then also use vegan mayo for the sauce). And then you could use panko breadcrumbs instead of almond flour. Also, here is a similar recipe that calls for a coating of crushed tortilla chips. Again, you could use an egg-free mayo in this recipe, which is already nut free and dairy free.