Lime Butter Sauce for Fish
Turn your fish into a restaurant-style meal with just 10 minutes and less than 5 ingredients. This Lime Butter Sauce for fish is absolutely delicious with any type of fish you have and a great way to elevate any meal.
Try it on pan seared salmon!
Oi, Gente!!
This simple butter sauce for fish can turn any basic fish into an elegant main dish. And the best part is that it’s incredibly easy to make. The final butter sauce is flavorful, buttery smooth and full of bright and sweet nutty flavors.
This Lime Butter Sauce is super versatile. It’s perfect for fish and all kinds of other seafood, like shrimp, lobster, scallops, clams and mussels.
And it’s fantastic on chicken and steamed or roasted vegetables, too.
Basically, this is one sauce that you can drizzle on nearly everything!
I hope you love this recipe as much as I do!!
Beijinhos xx
Fish Recipes you’ll love: Baked Lime Salmon, Salmon Chimichurri, Tuna Dip Recipe (Pastinha de Atum)
Ingredients and Tools
remember!
Making changes to a recipe can result in recipe failure. Substitutions can greatly alter your final results.
- Unsalted butter — this is a must for a butter sauce, and there is no replacement. You may use salted butter if that’s all that you have at home.
- Brazilian sofrito — or a few garlic cloves, minced.
- Lime — we will be using both the lime zest and lime juice.
- Parsley — fresh parsley that’s been freshly minced adds beautiful color and flavor to our sauce! You simply will not get the same result with dried parsley.
- Salt and pepper — you’ll add these to taste at the end. Medium grain kosher salt (like Diamond Crystal) and freshly ground pepper are my favorite.
Recommended Equipment:
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How to make Lime Butter Sauce
Melt half the butter in a small skillet or saucepan over medium-low heat.
Add the brazilian sofrito to the melted butter and sautee until fragrant and golden.
As this happens, the butter will also brown a little and along with the golden garlic and the fatty butter, will provide a perfectly nutty sweet flavor.
Then just add in the lime juice. This will cut through the fat and will also provide a pop of brightness to the sauce.
Add in the rest of the butter, just to melt and turn off the heat.
Whisk in the parsley and the lemon zest at the end, and then you’re done!
Pro Tip
It’s important to add these two ingredients off the heat because we don’t want to cook them. We just need the residual heat to warm them up and release their bright, grassy green flavor oils into the sauce.
If we cook them, the flavor profile changes and the lime zest can turn bitter and the parsley become muted and flat.
Give it a taste and add salt and pepper to taste, if needed.
How to store:
You can double the recipe and save more for later.
And if you have any leftovers, store it in an airtight container and keep in the refrigerator for up to a week or so. To reheat, pop it in the microwave and heat it in short bursts at a time – give it a stir to combine everything as the butter melts.
How to serve:
I photographed this recipe while I was working in Brazil, so I served it with purê de batata baroa (also known as purê de mandioquinha, depending on where you are in Brazil).
This root vegetable is one of my obsessions and when I’m in Brazil, I typically eat it with every meal. It’s so good!!
Sadly, I haven’t be able to find it anywhere I’ve been outside of Brazil.
If you want to serve this alongside a starchy carb, try it out with Mashed Yuca, Fried Sweet Plantains or Instant Pot Garlic Mashed Potatoes.
This sauce is delicious drizzled on Air Fryer Broccolini and Baked Asparagus with Parmesan.
You could also serve it with rices, like Instant Pot Brown Rice Recipe, Carrot Rice and Walnut Rice.
Other Sauces and Dressings to Try:
- Caper Sauce for Fish
- Passion Fruit Sauce
- Spinach Almond Pesto Recipe
- Mango Salad Dressing
- Creamy Avocado Lime Dressing
- Cilantro Chimichurri Sauce Recipe
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Lime Butter Sauce for Fish
Ingredients
- 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter
- 2 teaspoons of Brazilian sofrito or 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tablespoon of lime juice freshly squeezed
- 1 teaspoon of lime zest from one lime
- 1 tablespoon of minced parsley
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Melt half of the butter over medium to low heat in a small frying pan.
- Add in the sofrito. Sautee until the garlic is aromatic and golden, about 2-3 minutes.
- Pour in the lime juice and the rest of the butter, whisking to melt.
- Turn off the heat. Add the zest and parsley, stirring to complete.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Spoon over fish and serve!
