Grilled Arctic Char with Blueberry Ginger Compote

August 24, 2020

Servings: 4

Prep: 5 min

Cook: 15 min

Total: 20 min

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Fish + blueberries - an unlikely, but phenomenal, combination! Sometimes it really pays off to think outside the box!

By: A Wholesome New World

Ingredients

• 1 lb fresh arctic char
• 1 TBSP olive oil
• The juice of one lemon
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp
• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2 TBSP cider vinegar
• 1 TBSP packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
• ½ tsp lemon zest
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp ground pepper

Directions

• Step 1 For the blueberry compote: Add olive oil to a small sauce pan and heat over medium-high. Sauté garlic about 3 minutes or until softened. Add the blueberries, vinegar, brown sugar, ginger, and lemon zest. Bring to boil, then reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, about 15 minutes or until sauce has thickened.
• Step 2 While the sauce is simmering, prepare your fish. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice, and season generously with salt and pepper. Heat your grill to a high temperature. Sear the arctic char, starting skin side down for about 5-6 minutes each side. Optionally, grill a vegetable (like broccoli) along with the char.
• Step 3 Slice the char into fillets and serve with the blueberry compote drizzled on top.

This recipe boasts a combination of flavors that doesn’t necessarily jump to mind, but you shouldn’t discount berries’ ability to pair nicely with meat, especially fish. I know – I’ll never think twice about it again!

So how did we end up here? Marc gets all the credit for dreaming this up, and most of the credit for execution. He came home with the arctic char from the store and since we’ve been relishing all of these last late-summer opportunities to grill, we knew that was the perfect way to prepare it.

We’re big fans of arctic char in this house, but for some reason, we haven’t been buying it much this summer. Kicking myself for that now, but better late than never! This is another favorite char recipe from the blog.

The blueberry compote seems slightly out of left field, but now that we’ve embraced it, I can see why it’s such a winning pairing. Even though I cook arctic char almost interchangeably with salmon, this freshwater fish has a more distinctive almost-sweet flavor, closer to trout – a great contrast to the tart blueberry compote. Char is also meatier than salmon, more along the lines of whitefish. And if you need more convincing, it’s more sustainable – as I learned from a recent write-up in Forbes, Seafood Watch, the world’s gold standard for assessing seafood sustainability, gives both wild caught and farmed char its highest rating, green, whereas the vast majority of farmed Atlantic salmon gets the worst rating, red.

So, with that said, I hope you’ll dig into this recipe, blueberries and all. If you’re truly smart, I’d make a double batch of this compote and serve it with your french toast, or ricotta pancakes (which reminded me, I’ve been meaning to post that recipe too!), the next morning.

It’s the recipe that keeps on giving!