Meals · Skillet & sheet-pan mains
Sole meunière (sole in brown butter and lemon)
Sole fillets dusted with flour and cooked until just golden, then finished with nutty browned butter, lemon and parsley. Ready in half an hour, with boiled new potatoes to soak up the butter in the pan.
- Time
- 30 min (5 prep + 25 cook)
- Servings
- 2
- Per serving
- 411 kcal
- Protein
- 28 g
Ingredients
- 10 1/2 oz new potatoes, boiled in salted water
- 14 oz sole, 4 sole fillets, skinned, or any thin flatfish; weighed raw (about 320 g cooked)
- 1 1/2 tbsp all-purpose flour, for dusting
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp white pepper
- 3 tbsp butter, divided
- 2 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
- 4 tsp lemon juice
To serve
- 2 thin slices lemon
Steps
- Boil the potatoes in salted water for about 15 minutes, until tender, and drain. Keep them warm in the pot with the lid on.
- While the potatoes cook, pat the sole very dry and season with the salt and white pepper. Put the flour on a plate, press the fillets into it on both sides and shake off all the excess.
- Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When it foams, lay in the fillets and cook for 2 minutes a side, turning once with a wide spatula, until golden and 145°F inside. If you cook in two batches, split this butter between them. Lift onto warm plates.
- Wipe the pan out with paper towel. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and cook over medium heat for 1–2 minutes, swirling, until it smells nutty and turns light brown. Take off the heat at once, add the parsley and the lemon juice (it will spit) and swirl.
- Pour the browned butter over the fish, add the lemon slices and potatoes and serve straight away.
Good to know
Can I use whole sole?
Yes, it is the restaurant way. Ask the fishmonger to remove the dark skin, and cook each fish for about 4 minutes a side. Cook one at a time, because two whole soles rarely fit one pan.
Which other fish work?
Any thin white fillet works: plaice, flounder, dab or lemon sole. Thicker fish such as cod needs a minute or two longer on each side.
Per
- Calories
- 117
- Protein
- (27%)
- 8 g
- Fat
- (44%)
- 6 g
- Carbohydrates
- (29%)
- 9 g
- of which sugar
- 1 g
- Fiber
- 1 g
- Sodium
- 369 mg
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Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. How
As written, 823 kcal goes into the pot and 717 g of ingredients comes out as about 703 g of food: 117 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.