Authentic Newfoundland Cod Au Gratin Recipe

Today we're making cod au gratin and even though this is a very basic simple and traditional Newfoundland meal there is many different ways to make it. So a lot of people are going to argue in the comments that this is not the traditional way or this is not how they make it. Well this is the traditional way it's the basic simple cod au gratin. Now cod for many years even back in the 1600s was baked with different sauces like creams even more basic but it was only around the mid 1900s that processing of dairy took place where we started adding cheese. So this is not a old old recipe that dates back you know 100 years or more but it is definitely something that became even better over time. Now I know a lot of people adds a lot of different spices and ingredients but we're going to stick to the very basic simple traditional cod au gratin. So first thing we're going to do we're going to boil our fish and we have some beautiful cod fillets here. Now I got plenty to make two dishes of cod au gratin and I'm definitely going to do that. So you only need about three fillets to do one dish with the ingredients I'm going to be sharing with you. So this beautiful cod I got about six or seven fillets here that's absolutely beautiful. I'm just going to add it to the pot and boil it for about 20 minutes. Then once it's done we're going to prepare our dish with some beautiful cheeses along with some very basic very simple very delicious. Of course this is fresh fish that dad actually caught didn't catch this year made it frozen since last year because he wasn't fortunate enough to get out and boat. We don't own our own boats we have to rely on invites from other people and this year didn't get an invite. So we didn't get any of our own fish still got some from last year and we also bought a few bit of fish and we also purchased some fish as well. Would have been nice to get out and boat get some fish but sometimes it just doesn't work out. We're going to boil this for about 20 to 25 minutes probably around 20 minutes then we're going to bake it for another 30 minutes. So our cod is fully cooked so what we're going to do we're going to just place that to one side to cover. We're going to take our fish out kind of let it cool a little because we do have to take the skin off so we kind of want it out of the water. Now there will be some water in with the fish in the bowl. We want it to cool a little before we take it take the skin off. Fresh cod fish it's nice when you're able to fish it yourself nothing better. We don't want to get all the fish we don't want to throw any away. There we go move that pot to one side. Now we're going to move so we're going to start preparing our onion. I'm going to add lots of onion to this recipe and where we got lots of beautiful fish we're actually going to cook up two batches. Why not have it for a few days and you know if it tastes good why not give some away. We'll see how it turns out. I mean it's very basic. It has to be delicious because you're not adding any type of ingredient that's questionable for people. It's a very simple traditional basic recipe. Some people don't like onion I don't know who that is right Sean but that's okay too. Onion is what makes a lot of flavor and a lot of recipes. A lot of people likes the taste but they don't like the texture. I was like that when I was younger but I grew up. Sean I haven't grown up yet and I think at this point it's probably too late. So we've got our onion ready. I'm just going to chop that up. So let's get that done before we start preparing everything. Cod rodent I haven't added in such a long time and it calls for mozzarella cheese on top but I don't have any mozzarella. I got marble and the reason I got marble is it's lactose. So it's lactose. Now back in 95 I started getting a really bad cough and it lasted forever. It could last three months but the cough would always come mostly after I get the flu and it would last forever. I mean I went to the doctor they said oh no it's you need puffers. I was like no I don't need puffers because the puffer they gave me was this blue one. Same one my father was taking and I actually had tried my father's. I know you're not supposed to try other people's medications but this was just a very basic standard puffer that they gave to everyone. Everyone had one that needed the puffer and I tried that it didn't help. The doctor said oh no no it's just your airway needs to be open and got nothing to do with my airway. It's like just something on my chest that I just can't get off my chest. So I went with the puffer that didn't work and this was in 95 and I did not find out what was wrong until maybe 10 years ago and it might have been not even 10 I'm not sure but let's say around 10 years ago. Mom was talking to her niece and she heard me coughing and she said oh well Jimmy's allergic to dairy too. Not that we know of. Yeah that's the cough. A lot of us got it too. Sister now has it. Well father has it as well but father's on the other side of the family. So I don't know what happened there but it's a buildup of mucus that we can't get off our chest and as a result of my coughing I actually formed an hernia that a few years ago I had repaired. So the coughing would be violent coughing and so if I have too much dairy over a period of you know three or four days I consume too much or too much processed foods then the coughing starts and then I got to basically stop all dairy all processed foods in order to get it out of my system. So dad has it. My sister has it. So I try to go with lactose milk and we have it here today. Lactose milk and also lactose cheese and it doesn't have any effect on me. So it doesn't hurt me. You know cheese doesn't hurt me. Dairy doesn't hurt me. It's not like I'm lactose but it just creates more mucus that creates a lot of coughing, violent coughing and it gets really bad. So we're going with marble lactose. It's the only thing I can find and I actually enjoy the lactose version. So what we're going to do now we have our onion separated for two dishes because this recipe is for one dish but I got lots of cod enough to make two dishes. So what we're going to do we're going to get this set up. That onion is going to go on top after. So we're going to push this to one side just to make some room and we're going to prepare our fish. We're going to get our fish put in the bowl and like I said we got enough to have two dishes. So we want to take the skin off the fish. So very easy once it's cooked and we're just going to place it in the bottom. Now three fillets should be plenty for this recipe for the amount that I'm going to talk about. I thought I brought a fork to make it a little easier. Don't worry about my hands. My hands are very clean. When we're at this stuff we're constantly washing, constantly using wipes. I'm going to put the fish in the bottom. Just break it up a little bit. Not a lot. We want the bottom to be completely covered. Like I said you can see how easy it is to skin a fish. As they say skin a cat but we're going to skin a fish. There we go. Just break it apart a bit. Cover the bottom. Nice and flaky. Now it says completely cooked fish right? Now if you make kata gratin do you cook your fish first or do you just put it in the oven? Cook it in the oven and then add cheese later. Is that what you do? Let me know because we can do it different the next time. Just give me some ideas. When it comes to other ingredients just let me know what what you add to your kata gratin. Have you ever made it is there another fish that you use this recipe for? Because I mean we have people watching from all over the world so it's nice to know is there another type of fish that you have this recipe for because this is a very basic recipe. Let me know in the comments have you ever made this type of recipe with a different fish and what do you do different? We don't break it up too small. We're only cooking it long enough to get a nice golden brown on our cheese. Like I said it only takes about three nice fillets to fill the bottom and this skin is very very good. Very high in nutrients as well. Now some people will take skin of cod dry it and they will give it to their dogs over the winter as treats. Very high in nutrients. So anytime you skin your cod and you've got a dog think about just drying it. Put it on the flake. Put it outside in the summer especially. It's easy to do and dry your fish. Dry your the skins for your dog for the winter. I'm sure they will love it and we're almost done with this dish. Now even though this is skin and everything you might get the odd bone and so be careful when you're eating any type of dish like this with fish. Even though they'll say that it's boneless there's always a chance always a chance there may be a bone. So don't eat as if it's your last meal. Now some people might say that I'm mangling this fish but I'm not. I'm mostly touching the skin. Very little touching of the fish itself. I don't care if I get off all the fish because I'm going to give that skins to the to the doggies as a treat. This one is done and again my hands is plenty of clean. And if you were cooking for your family when you have gloves on you might say well this is on the internet. Yes it is. You're watching from the internet. Surprise surprise. But what home do you go into on your family rather it be your brothers or sisters or in-laws or your parents and you go into the kitchen and they got an air net hair net on on their beard for the guys you know preparing your meal. I don't think too many people experience that. I'd be worried very worried if I walked into the kitchen of a family member and they got gloves and an air net and probably even a mask on you know I'd be very worried about what I'm eating. Very worried. More so than than they're worried about any type of cross-contamination or their hands touching the food. Yeah I'd definitely be worried. I'd have to think back did I do something to them this week that they're a little upset with because I don't think anyone have ever walked into a family member's kitchen with them using gloves and so I mean we're not cooking in a restaurant. That's totally different atmosphere. Totally different regulations. You know we're giving out to family and friends and you know if they don't want to eat it they don't have to. Nobody's forcing them. We have enough fish here for this dish. I might have overdid it with that one but this codfish smells incredible and I mean we take it for granted. I know we do that we can get codfish fairly easily even if we got to buy it. I mean if we had our own boat but we got so much stuff on the go right now that we're trying to do that the boat is not in the picture. I'd love to have it. I used to have my own boat years ago when I lived at home before I moved in here and they had always had access to a boat as well. So we always did fishing. Squid fishing, cod fishing always. So sometimes you take for granted when we can't do it anymore. But getting a boat is really not something we want to invest in right now as we're trying to. So I'm trying to start my house in the near future. That's going to cost a fortune in itself. So as long as we can still buy fish we're still good. Okay we got some this is the worst thing about the fish is sometimes you get a section where you can feel the bones. Hopefully there's not a lot of bone in this. I can feel I want to take out the bone as much as possible. I don't want anybody choking on our cod rotten. There we go. Look how beautiful a white Atlantic cod really is. It's absolutely beautiful. This dish a little smaller. We're okay with that. Not quite as thick. Three fillets is all you need. One and a half pounds. If you got more you make more. I'm gonna add some onion. I might have added too much. That's okay. We call for a lot. If we don't use all this we'll make something up tomorrow to use the rest of the onion. There we go. That's all we're going to use. We're going to use the rest for tomorrow. They called for a lot of onion for this recipe but we don't need it. That's plenty. The top is covered and that's all that matters. We love onion. So now we're going to add our bread crumbs. We're going to add our bread crumbs before we add the milk. I think it's one and a half. One and a half cups of milk. I'm going to use this to sprinkle on the bread crumbs. I'm not sure how much bread crumbs we're going to use. Let me see. This is half a cup. Definitely needs more. I say it's going to be a full cup and it is a full cup of bread crumbs. I cover all the fish, all the onion. It's going to taste incredible. Trust me on that. So we're going to do the same for a smaller amount here. The dish is probably the same. It's like a 2.3 liter dish. We're definitely going to add more bread crumbs. Now we're going to freeze that rest of that bag of bread crumbs and the reason for that is when we do our dressing, when we're cooking up a good meal and we're making our dressing, it's nice to have some bread crumbs. Instead of wasting it, throwing it out, we're actually going to freeze it. So this is the lactose milk that I use. I like it. I really like it. We're going to use a cup of milk. So this is actually half a cup. So we're going to pour up. I like our bread crumbs wet. That's the point of getting wet. I'm going to soak in that milk. I might use a little bit more for the bigger dish. Just a little bit more for the bigger dish. I'm going to use a cup for this one. Now this is lactose so it's not going to give you as a creamy same as regular milk because it's more watered kind of thing. So unless you're lactose, go with your regular milk for this. It'll give you a much creamier base. We'll see how that turns out. It's going to be different with the lactose. So now we got our milk added. We're going to add some salt and pepper. We should have did that before we put the bread crumbs on but nevertheless, I'm going to do it now because there is no salt. This is not salt fish. This is fresh fish. It's not corn fish. It's fresh fish. So let's get some pepper in there. Mother's not crazy but a lot of pepper. Let's get some in there just to give it a little bit of taste. We're going to go with some grated cheese. Now the grated cheese. Sometimes I forget the garbage is there. So get our cheese ready. We're going to grate it up. Lactose cheese. Again, you can go with regular. I only went with this because our condition or my condition. Go with regular cheese, mozzarella. Some people put bread crumbs on top of the cheese. We're doing it the old-fashioned way, the traditional way. How much cheese? That's to your own desire. We're going to coat the entire top of the dish. Let's make sure it's quite a bit. And you know what? We might even add some bread crumbs to the top. Just sprinkle it on just so that it gets into the cheese. Nice to have some bread crumbs in the cheese. So let's give this a try. Now let's spread this out. Definitely need more for there, I think. But we might have enough for here. We don't have enough. We don't have enough cheese. What are you talking about? Almost enough there. But no, no, no, no. That's not enough cheese. What are you talking about? Again, that might be enough for you, right? Kind of go overboard cheese. He likes it cheesy. And again, we're just going with the traditional recipe. I know usually when I make things like pizza and a casserole, anything with cheese, I like adding different types of cheeses to get more flavors. But our main goal here is to get the flavor of the cod. We don't want anything to interrupt that beautiful flavor. So that's why I'm not going with multiple cheeses. Plus, this is going to be with normal milk and normal cheese. It's going to be full of dairy. It's going to be like loaded with dairy. And I want to enjoy it. And I don't want to suffer for it because of coughing. So that's why I went with the lactose. But if you go with normal milk, cheese, it's going to be very creamy. It's going to be very nice. A little bit there. I think we're good with all that. Rest inside. There we go. Push that back. You know, some recipes calls for dill, some for mustard, and there's so many different spices you can add. It's all great. Don't get me wrong. It's all great. It all tastes wonderful. You get all those flavors. Of course, it will taste great. We want the traditional. Now we're just going to sprinkle a little bit on top so that it melts into the cheese. Just a little. Nothing too much. Cod au gratin. It don't have to be difficult. It don't have to be, oh, I don't have this spice and that. Because I was going around town looking for different spices. And I called mom and I said, mom, check your old cookbook. What do it say about cod au gratin? She came back with a very simple, very basic recipe. I'll post it for you so you can see it. And she says, this is all it calls for. And she said, you know, the things you're asking for, she said, I never added that to my. So we want something very simple, very delicious. We don't want a lot of ingredients that overpowers the taste of the cod, because if you're buying your cod, it can be very expensive. So why miss out on that flavor and that taste? You know, I know wings, wings, chicken wings is a big thing. And there's people that love the hot wings, but you're paying so much money for wings and you can't even enjoy the taste of the chicken. Their mouths are burning. You know, those really hot wings, right? Yeah. Extreme wings, extreme heat. And it's like, man, just pour a hot sauce in your mouth. But I know a lot of people love it. They enjoy it. They love going out and having hot wings, but I want to enjoy the flavor, the flavor of the meat, the flavor of the fish. Now, sometimes, yeah, I do like a hot wing. I do like loading up on different spices and cheeses and different ingredients. And sometimes I do enjoy that as well. But most of the time when it comes to fish, I want the taste of the fish. I don't want anything to be, you know, disguised to taste and overpower the taste. I just want a beautiful tasting fish. That's why I love fried cod. Love it. And I love mom's deep fried cod because the batter doesn't overpower the taste of the fish. And I like to try that soon. I like to get a nice fillet and actually use mom's batter. Try to make it a little more, less, less fluffy, more crisp. And I want to experiment with that sometime soon in a video to see how it turns out. But this cod fish, cod au gratin, I can't wait to try it. I know that milk is not as thick. You know, you can use cream if you want. You know, there's so many different things you can do to spruce it up to make it more creamier. But we're definitely going to throw this in the oven. We're going to bake it on 325 until the cheese is golden brown. Remember, the fish is cooked. And once the cheese is golden brown, we're good. Don't leave it in any more than 30 minutes. So let me know. Do you cook your fish first? Mom couldn't remember. It's been so long since mom made it. Mom said, I don't think I cooked my fish first. So let me know. Did you cook your fish first? Or did you add everything besides the cheese, place it in the oven for longer, and when the fish was baked, you added the cheese for 15-20 minutes afterwards? Let me know. Is that how you did it? Did you bake your fish in the oven, then added the cheese for the last 15-20 minutes? Or did you pre-cook your fish first? I'd like to know. Mother can't remember. It's been that long. So we're going to throw this in the oven, and we're going to show you what it looks like. Hopefully, that lactose milk, hopefully it'll turn out the way we want it. And the cod gratin is all ready. Look how amazing this looks. We're going to take up a bit. We let it set for just a few minutes. Kind of wanted the bubbling to stop. Kind of let it thicken up a little. Didn't want to cut into it when it was too hot or be too runny. So by letting it cool down a bit, you're letting it set up a bit. Let's go. It smells incredible. Let's get the sides down. Look at this. Look how beautiful that looks. That is incredible. Look at the fish. The fish, the onion. Now that milk is more runnier than it would be if it was thicker cream or even regular milk. But again, I didn't want to be coughing for two or three days. So this is why we're using lactose. That's beautiful. Beautiful. Smells incredible. Beautiful. We're going to taste that cod first. Just the cod. Yeah, I remember the taste now. It's been a while, but we also got some beautiful crumbs in there. Some beautiful cheese. And that fly is back. A good taste of olive together with onion. Wonderful meal. Absolutely delicious. That cod gratin turned out perfect. Beautiful flavors. Just beautiful. This is a delicious meal. Great as a side dish if you don't want to have it for a full meal where you do have a lot of dairy. You can definitely cook it and have it as a side dish. That's why you don't need a lot of codfish in the bottom. That's why you don't need a lot of codfish in the bottom. We're bringing back our dragonfly. It's been working, believe it or not. So the cod gratin, very traditional, very basic ingredients because we want to enjoy that codfish, the flavors of the cod. And it turned out absolutely. Except for less creamy because of lactose milk, but I'm okay with that because I won't be coughing for the next week. I can actually sit down and enjoy this and not have to worry about the effects. And if you enjoy Newfoundland content, if you enjoy my videos, and if you enjoy fishing and hunting, I want you to check out my cousin's YouTube page. He's right over here and he does a lot of outdoor activities, hunting, fishing, and he just lives down the road from me. Great content. Great family. Go check him out. I'll leave a link in the description. And if you really enjoyed this video, check out this one over here and we'll see you in our next video.