Baked Lemon Butter Tilapia
The easiest, most effortless 20 min meal ever from start to finish. And it’s all made in a single pan. Win-win situation here.
Okay, guys. I figured we all needed a little bit of a chicken thigh break.
I clearly love to create a new chicken thigh recipe once a week but we were due for a change. But still, we’re keeping the basics down with the whole lemon-garlic-butter situation.
Because let’s face it. We don’t want to mess with that combination.
So that’s exactly what’s happening here. We’re using budget-friendly tilapia, which cooks in just 10 minutes, drizzled with that butter sauce. It goes right in the oven from start to finish, making your life just that much easier.
You can thank me later.
Baked Lemon Butter Tilapia
Ingredients
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more, to taste
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 4 6-ounce tilapia fillets
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly oil a 9×13 baking dish or coat with nonstick spray.
- In a small bowl, whisk together butter, garlic, lemon juice and lemon zest; set aside.
- Season tilapia with salt and pepper, to taste and place onto the prepared baking dish. Drizzle with butter mixture.
- Place into oven and bake until fish flakes easily with a fork, about 10-12 minutes.
- Serve immediately, garnished with parsley, if desired.
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I used a little more butter in my recipe and used frozen fish. Still waiting lol It’s gonna be another 10 minutes ❤
Cooked this last night. Mine also did not have that nice golden color. Mine was rather whitish gray. I finally turn the broiler on to see if I could get some color onto it, but it didn’t do much. Taste was fine though.
A little paprika will give nice color and should not change taste.
Would lime work as well or just better with lemons?
Yes, lime will work as well!
Hi – I just followed your recipe and the dish didn’t turn out the way I expected. I baked the tilapia for 10 minutes with the exact lemon butter mixture you described. The fish turned out pretty dry, even a bit overcooked. And it didn’t get the yellowish golden layer like yours on the picture you posted. Was I missing something??
Bummer! I am not entirely sure – did you make any substitutions?
The picture and her video seem to look different? Anyway I coated my fish in olive oil first and then added the lemon butter mix.
This was great. The only thing I did differently was to add a splash of dry white wine to the butter lemon sauce. We wanted to lick our plates afterwards! Had sauteed yellow squash and tomatoes with it. Really awesome, easy recipe.
Just curios. Did you remove the black skin of the tilapia before it was made into a fillet? If so how to do it? Thanks
It was actually already removed upon purchasing from the butcher.
My husband is a bass fisherman. Would this recipe work well for bass filets? Seems like it would. I usually make a creole red sauce and serve bass cooked in the creole sauce over rice. We both need to stop eating rice every day. This would be a very good start. We are trying to get our carbs from vegetables. However, I still cannot get him to eat cauliflower!
Yes, absolutely!
Try chopping the cauliflower up finely to make “cauliflower rice” my family loves it as a rice substitute, also I paired it with roasted green beans and it was a hit!
Can you do the same with frozen fish or does it need to be thawed filets?
I recommend using thawed filets.
typically frozen fillets only take 5 minutes under running cold water to thaw. I cook Tilapia fillets all the time and buy the frozen as they are individually packaged for me 🙂
Cooked this last night for my family and they loved it! My 3 year old daughter kept asking me for seconds, then thirds!! I will definitely be making this again.
I cooked my fish for 15 minutes and it still wasn’t done ): too bad, maybe the fish I used was too big? It was larger than tilapia I’m used to.
Cooking time may vary depending on the size of the fish.
I made this tonight and it was delicious, but some of the sauce started to burn and that was kind of gross. I have a convection oven and turned down the heat to 400 (standard convention says take 25 degrees off regular oven temp for convection oven). Any thoughts?
Perhaps you can reduce the oven temperature to 375 degrees F?
Are we supposed to cook lemon slices with the fish? You don’t say to do that in your recipe but it looks like thats what you did?
I used lemon slices simply as a garnish for photographic purposes. It is not required.
We’re trying this over the weekend. Just wondering, would it be possible to mention in your various recipes what side dishes would pair wonderfully with each entree? I know it would be some work for you but you always have great taste (pun intended)
My absolute favorite side dish is the garlic parmesan roasted potatoes. But please feel free to check out all of my side dish recipes here.
Made this tonight…. didn’t have fresh lemons (used lemon juice) and it was delicious! Just wish I would have made more!
Thanks for sharing!
This is perfect! I love tilapia so I’m definitely going to give this a try 🙂 Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing this recipe. This meal didn’t work out for me and my family but I think it was the tilapia we used (which was frozen then thawed). I’m determined to make this work and will try again in the future.because it was very simple and quick to make.
I have a ?, in your dish it looks like you have 3 fish pieces but your recipe calls for 4. Were you only able to bake 3 in that pan?
I used a smaller baking dish for photographic purposes only.
Hi What other fish could be used I am unable to get fresh Tilapia and I don’t purchase anything in a bag or farm raised any other fish I could use
You can substitute other white fish including snapper, grouper, flounder, and rockfish.
Yum! My son love ALL seafood. Can’t wait to give this a try. Can you please come stay with us, because I love all the dishes you present.
Probably a dumb question, but is this time based on frozen or thawed?
Nope – not a dumb question at all. This is based on thawed fish, not frozen.
shrimp on the mind? LOL.
Yes! Thank you for pointing that out! 🙂