What's The Best Fish To Use For Bouillabaisse?

There's a lot of variety when it comes to the famed French dish bouillabaisse, both in the recipe and where you're likely to find it. While it may be served at Anthony Bourdain's favorite fancy Parisian restaurant, it's originally a creation of working-class fisherman from Provence in southern France. If your French is rusty or nonexistent, try to phonetically pronounce the word like "booyah bess." Essentially, it's a fish and tomato stew served with spicy mayonnaise and hefty bread slices. There isn't a singular "best" fish for bouillabaisse because you should be including an assortment of seafood anyway. The exact combination is different in each stew, much like the similar San Francisco dish cioppino. In both cases, the stews were designed for local fisherman to toss in their leftover catches from that day.

In general, your goal with bouillabaisse is thick whitefish filets and shellfish. However, because of the humble, hyper-local origins of bouillabaisse, using fresh fish is considered the most important part by a lot of chefs. If possible, you should look for a selection of cheap, local catches of the day and cook with what's available. However, if you're buying frozen fish from the grocery store, your bouillabaisse will still be fine. In that case, think along the lines of mild sea bass or cod for the white fish, and shrimp and clams or mussels for the shellfish. Remember to also get fish stock for the broth.

Despite all the variations, if you're dead set on making an "original" bouillabaisse, you have a smaller pool of fish to choose from. For the original, classic Provençal version, you'd want the kind of fish native to the region, and a group of French restaurateurs even created a "Bouillabaisse Charter" in the 1980s to list out acceptable fish and seafood. According to the official tourism board of Marseilles, this includes scorpion fish, monkfish, conger eel, spider crab, red mullet, John Dory (a type of bony white fish), or lobster. Ideally, you'd use at least four different species, and ideally they'd be freshly caught, although this is a tougher ask if you don't live in France.

In other parts of the world, it's naturally different. It's not uncommon to find bouillabaisse with only shellfish, in which case you'll usually see a medley of shrimp, scallops, clams, muscles, and often a cooked lobster tail if it's on the fancier side (or in an area where lobster is local, like Maine). In the end, plenty of recipes will say you only need a pound of fish or shellfish and not specify any further. Modern bouillabaisse can contain all kinds of seafood, so feel free to experiment with the fish you like.