Oven Baked Pickerel Fillets

I'm not a particular lover of fish. I do, however, try to include it in my diet as often as is tolerable. I like the non-fishy tasting fish the best. So pickerel (known as walleye to you folks south of the 49th parallel) finds favour with me. It's light and mild. And especially delicious breaded and pan fried in golden butter.  Alas, the weight watcher in me knows that's not healthy, so I'm experimenting and trying to find an acceptable substitute.  Dipping the fish in egg whites and dredging it in seasoned breadcrumbs worked. It lacked that buttery goodness - but - hey! That buttery goodness is what packs on those extra pounds. One has to make sacrifices!

Seasoned Breadcrumbs

2/3 cup breadcrumbs

1 tsp. garlic powder

pinch of pepper

1 tsp. parsley flakes

1 tsp. Mrs. Dash® seasoning

This recipe made too much for 1 lb. fish fillets, but there was some leftover. Next time I will double the recipe and use about half a cup and freeze the rest for future use.  I would also use this on chicken pieces. It's a salt-free Shake'n Bake® substitute!

Oven-Baked Pickerel Fillets

Preheat oven to 400°  F.

1 lb. pickerel fillets 

1/3 cup egg whites

1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs

Rinse pickerel fillets and shake off water. Dip in egg white and dredge in seasoned bread crumbs.

Lay the pieces of fish onto cooking parchment on a cookie sheet in a single layer.

Bake at 400° for 15 minutes.

We liked it, and I would make it again this way. This method would work for other soft fish that don't take kindly to pan frying - such as sole. Next time, I might give the breaded fillets a quick spray of vegetable oil .

As for WeightWatcher® points, each of our pieces was approx. 3 oz, and each piece had no more than 1 tbsp. breadcrumbs in all, so that would be 3.5 points per piece of fish. The amount of egg white used per piece was negligible.