Simmer Your Fish In One Flavor-Packed Ingredient For An Easy Meal

Even if you love to cook, making dinner every night can start to feel like a full-time job. Between grocery shopping, prep, the actual cooking, and cleanup, it's no wonder delivery apps are so popular. You can still make fresh, healthful meals at home that don't take a lot of time, however, if you learn to use some foods you already have a little more creatively. Audrey Hepburn, for example, made a delicious pasta dish using regular bottled ketchup. And you can make an easy, flavor-packed meal by poaching a piece of fish in store-bought salsa.

A jar of store-bought salsa is, first and foremost, a dip. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have all the elements of a tasty, spicy tomato sauce. In fact, salsa is a secret weapon ingredient that can add heat and complexity to soups, stews, and yes — a filet of fish. All you need is some flaky white fish like tilapia, cod, or halibut, some cooking liquid, and a jar of your favorite salsa. It's so easy to make you don't even need a recipe. Simply heat up enough salsa in a sauté pan to cover the bottom, add a little fish stock or red wine vinegar to loosen up the texture of the sauce, season the fish, and then slowly cook it in the poaching liquid over low to medium heat until it's cooked through.

The beauty of cooking fish in salsa is that it takes almost no effort, yet it tastes like you've been slaving over the stove. That's because salsa is a self-contained flavor bomb, which is packed with onions, garlic, cilantro, vinegar, and spices, so you don't have to do any extra seasoning, cutting, or chopping. Store-bought salsas that are shelf stable are also already cooked, which has given the tomatoes a chance to break down and develop a rich, umami flavor.

The combination of salsa and white fish is ideal because delicate white fish varieties are very neutral-flavored, so they benefit from the big punch of flavor you get from the salsa. You can even use any kind of salsa flavor you'd like and it will still taste good, including varieties with fruit like mangoes and pineapples. Basically, if you like the flavor of the salsa, you'll probably like it just as much when it's cooked up with a tasty piece of fish. Poaching will also mute some of its fishy flavors. Plus, once the fish is cooked, the salsa doubles as a sauce, which is delicious dumped over the fish on a bowl of rice or pasta, and leaves no waste behind. As far as weeknight suppers go, it doesn't get any easier than that!