This page is better because of Alex Sunins, a reader who cooked it on sea bass, photographed it and shared his tested timings and sauce tweaks with me. Thank you, Alex.
Gordon Ramsay’s red mullet is fried in a crunchy peanut and chilli crust, then spooned with fresh sweet chilli sauce. It comes from Ultimate Cookery Course and takes 25 minutes. One of my readers cooked it before I did, and then made it his own.
Alex found no red mullet at Waitrose and cooked the whole thing on sea bass instead. He then emailed me his photo and his own sauce numbers, both of which you will meet further down this page.
Plan around the sauce, because it takes most of the cooking time. Alex pounds it first, washes the mortar, then reuses it for the peanut crust. His full timing routine is in the FAQs below.
Gordon Ramsay’s Red Mullet with Sweet Chilli Sauce
Course: DinnersCuisine: AsianDifficulty: Medium4
servings15
minutes10
minutes600
kcal25 minutes
Ramsay says the chilli, fish sauce and lime give this sweet fish “a wake-up call”. From the Chilli and Spice chapter of Ultimate Cookery Course, with a tested reader variation built into the FAQs below.
Ingredients
- For the sweet chilli sauce:
2 red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
3 spring onions, trimmed and chopped
Handful of coriander, leaves chopped
Juice of 1 lime
- For the fish:
4 red mullet fillets, about 150g (5 oz) each, descaled
150g (1 cup) skinned peanuts
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
Salt
Small handful of coriander, leaves chopped
2 eggs, beaten
Dash of fish sauce
Olive oil, for frying
1 lime, for squeezing
Directions
- Make the sauce: Pound the chillies, garlic, salt and sugar to a smooth paste in a mortar, since the salt works as an abrasive. Mix in the fish sauce, rice vinegar and olive oil with a spoon. Stir in the spring onions, coriander and lime juice, then taste and add more sugar if it bites too hard.
- Make the crust: Pound the peanuts, chilli flakes and a good pinch of salt until finely chopped but never powdered. Mix in the coriander and scatter onto a plate. Beat the eggs in a shallow bowl with a dash of fish sauce and a pinch of salt.
- Coat the fish: Dip each fillet skin side down into the egg and shake off the excess, because a heavy egg layer makes the crust patchy. Press the same side into the peanut mix until coated.
- Fry: Heat a little oil in a frying pan over a medium heat, never high. Lay the fillets in crust side down for 2 to 3 minutes until golden, then turn and cook for 1 to 2 minutes more, basting as you go.
- Finish and serve: Squeeze fresh lime over each fillet off the heat. Spoon the chilli sauce generously over the fish at the table.
FAQs
Can you make this with sea bass instead of red mullet?
Yes, and Alex is the proof. He wanted mullet, Waitrose had none, so he cooked the full recipe on sea bass fillets instead.
His tested timings match the book: 3 minutes on the crusted side, 2 on the fillet side. He also whisks the egg plain, skipping the book’s dash of fish sauce, and the crust still grips. For sea bass without any crust, his miso Chilean sea bass steams in a parcel instead.
How do you make the sweet chilli sauce less sharp?
Follow the book’s own advice and add sugar, because Ramsay tells you to taste and adjust at the end. Alex settled on 2 tablespoons instead of 1, with the fish sauce halved to a single tablespoon.
He keeps the spring onions and coriander sparing, and when he has no herbs at all he adds the zest of half a lime instead. If you prefer your chillies slow-cooked and sticky, his chilli jam is this sauce’s opposite.
Why do the peanuts burn and how do you stop it?
Ramsay warns in the book not to crush them too much or they will burn, and the science backs him. Finely ground peanuts are mostly oil with a huge surface area, so they scorch before the fish cooks.
Keep the pound coarse, the heat at medium, and shake the excess egg off before coating. Alex even found the peanuts themselves matter: Waitrose basic ones hold a coarse pound while Co-op’s collapse into powder.
What order should you cook everything in?
Alex runs it like this: pat the fillets dry and rest them in the fridge for 45 minutes while you get organised. Start the pan warming gently while you pound the sauce.
When you reach the peanuts, add the oil and bring the pan up to heat, he aims for 170C (340F). Count the fridge rest and the honest total runs past an hour, not the card’s 25 minutes. It is the same pan-first patience behind his pan-fried salmon.
Where do you buy red mullet in the UK?
From a fishmonger or a supermarket fish counter, and even then not reliably, which is how this page ended up with a sea bass photo. British red mullet peaks from late spring through summer.
Ask for the fillets descaled with the pin bones out. If yours has none that day, sea bass or bream take the crust just as well.
Can you store leftover red mullet and sauce?
The crusted fish does not store, because the peanut coating softens within hours in the fridge. Eat it the day you cook it.
The sauce is the leftover worth keeping, and it holds for two days in the fridge. Spoon it over his grilled prawns and that is a second dinner from ten minutes of work.
