Herb-Butter Poached/Oven Baked Halibut

This dinner started out with the intent of being some baked halibut fillets.  But the fillets completely filled the dish that I got out to bake them in, and with the amount of herb butter that I had, it ended up being some sort of hybrid of baked and poached fish.  It wasn't completely submerged like a true poach, but it was close, and it was done in the oven instead of on a stove top.  Either way, it was fabulous and I'll be making this one again!

Notes:

Use whatever herbs/seasonings make sense to you in your compound butter.  This worked well but could totally be used as just a starting point or inspiration for whatever you like.  Chives and/or rosemary would be pretty good also.

I had some unsalted butter left over from something else that I needed to use, so I added salt.  If you're using salted butter just adjust or omit the extra salt.

I also had some butter left over to use for something else.  (steaks?  Maybe not with the lemon...  just going to have to do another fish something soon.)

Ingredients:

• 4 good quality halibut fillets.
• Herb butter (all amounts of herbs/seasonings below are just to taste.
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• Garlic, peeled and minced or pressed. (I probably used at least 10 cloves)
• Salt
• Pepper
• Dill
• Parsley
• Old Bay seasoning
• Lemon juice (I used about 3 tbsp I think)

Directions:

• Mix the butter

Combine the ingredients for the herb butter in a mixer bowl, and whip using the whisk attachment.  You might be able to do this by hand, but mixing lemon juice with butter could be a challenge without a stand mixer.

• Put it together:

Spread a thin layer of the butter on the bottom of your baking dish, place the fish fillets in the dish, and put a generous amount of butter on top of each fillet.  I really like old bay, so I added even more on top of the whole thing.

I didn't have fresh lemons, if I had, I would have put some thin lemon slices on top of the fish, and probably mixed the zest of a lemon into the butter.

20 minutes in a 400-degree oven would probably be enough for most people, , I went with 30 minutes at 400 degrees. This type of method is pretty forgiving, you'd have to really let it go way too long to overcook it I think.

I usually do a pilaf of some sort as a side with fish. In the old days I'd always make rice pilaf. Now I've changed that up to a bit more diabetes-friendly quinoa pilaf (It's not the same, nothing ever is, but it might just be better). And this day I had brussels sprouts, so we also did a side of pan seared, balsamic vinegar-glazed brussels sprouts. (Keep an eye out in the near future and I'll post those recipes, and if I think about it I'll come back and link them here in this post. They're some of my favorites.)

I imagine if it had been just fish it would have been a level line.  This was from the entire dinner and even with the carbs in the quinoa under 130 is a win.