Portuguese · Seafood
Fish fofos
About this recipe
Portuguese cooking is fundamentally a seafood and pork tradition, with bacalhau (salt cod) appearing in hundreds of forms, alongside Mediterranean staples — olive oil, garlic, tomato, sweet paprika — applied differently than in Spain.
As a seafood dish, Fish fofos demands timing precision: the difference between perfect and overcooked is often less than 90 seconds, and the result of overshooting is a textural penalty there's no fixing.
The scaler above resizes every ingredient to the number of servings you actually want; Cook Mode walks you through the recipe one step at a time with hands-free timers.
Recipe data is sourced from TheMealDB's open community database; ScaleRecipe handles the curation, the scaling math, the editorial commentary, and the conversion utilities woven into each page.
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Method
- STEP 1
- Put the fish into a lidded pan and pour over enough water to cover. Bring to a simmer and gently poach for 10 minutes over a low heat with the lid on. Drain and flake the fish.
- STEP 2
- Put the fish, potato, green chilli, coriander, cumin, black pepper, garlic and ginger in a large bowl. Season, add the rice flour, mix well and break in 1 egg. Stir the mixture and divide into 15, then form into small logs. Break the remaining eggs into a bowl and whisk lightly. Put the breadcrumbs into another bowl. Dip each fofo in the beaten egg followed by the breadcrumb mixture. Chill for 20 minutes.
- STEP 3
- Heat 1cm of oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Fry the fofos in batches for 2 minutes on each side, turning gently to get an even golden brown colour all over. Drain on kitchen paper and repeat with the remaining fofos.
- STEP 4
- For the onion salad, mix together the onion, coriander and lemon juice with a pinch of salt. Serve with the fofos and mango chutney.
Cooking notes
Scaling works best when you weigh ingredients rather than measure by volume — small differences in packing can compound at higher multipliers.
For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.
When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.
Scaling notes
Scaling Fish fofos
Fish fofos is written for around four servings as it stands on this page — scaling it up for a party or down for a meal-for-one is the small math problem most home cooks face every week. Here's how this particular dish responds to scaling, what changes linearly, and what doesn't.
Seafood is the most scaling-sensitive protein because the overcooking window is narrow and the penalty is steep. Scale Fish fofos per piece if you can — cook three fillets in two batches rather than crowd the pan into one. Sauce-based seafood dishes scale linearly, but always taste before adding more salt: brininess from the seafood itself doesn't scale predictably.
This recipe calls for eggs, which are the trickiest ingredient to scale to non-integer multiples. A US "large" egg weighs about 50 g; if a fractional scaling lands on, say, 1.5 eggs, beat one egg and weigh 25 g of the beaten mixture rather than guessing. The same goes for halving recipes — half an egg is 25 g of beaten egg, not a dramatic estimate.
When you scale the flour in this recipe, weigh it in grams if you can — a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 113 g to 150 g depending on how you measure. The ScaleRecipe ingredient converter uses the King Arthur Baking reference of 120 g/cup for all-purpose flour, which is the same standard most modern baking books assume.
Skip the math entirely — ScaleRecipe's scaler rewrites every ingredient line above with proper culinary fractions and smart unit promotion the moment you change the serving count. Open the scaler →
Beyond the recipe
Substitutions & make-ahead — Fish fofos
Two things home cooks ask about most when they're outside the recipe's exact assumptions: what swaps work for which ingredients, and how the dish behaves when you make it ahead. Both depend on what Fish fofos is doing structurally — here's the practical version.
Substitution ideas
Eggs
For binding (cookies, quick breads, meatballs): 1 large egg ≈ 1 tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 tbsp water, rested 5 minutes until gelled — structurally closest to a real egg. For moisture without structure (cakes, brownies): ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce or mashed banana per egg, accepting some loss of rise.
For weight-based swaps and arbitrary quantities, the ingredient density converter and the cup-to-grams chart cover most pantry staples.
Make-ahead and storage
Seafood is the worst-tempered category for make-ahead — texture and flavour both degrade quickly after cooking. Fish fofos should ideally be cooked the day it's served. If a make-ahead is unavoidable, prep components (the sauce, marinade, vegetables, garnishes) the day before and cook the fish or shellfish at the last moment. Cooked seafood develops a pronounced fishy off-flavour within 24 hours even when properly refrigerated.
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Fish fofos
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Volume
Tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ml, fluid ounces — every culinary volume unit, with US/metric/imperial cups handled distinctly.
OpenWeight
Grams, ounces, pounds, kilograms — exact for any ingredient, plus the volume-to-weight conversions for ~40 pantry staples.
OpenTemperature
Fahrenheit, Celsius, gas mark — translate any oven temperature, with notes on conventional vs convection.
OpenCooking time
The cube-root rule for scaling up, the differences between meat / cake / soup geometry, and sensible starting estimates.
OpenPan size
9-inch round vs 8-inch square vs 13×9. The math is surface area, not diameter — and the converter shows you both.
OpenLength
Inches and centimetres — for when a recipe says “cut into 1-inch pieces” and your ruler is metric.
OpenIngredient density
A cup of flour weighs 120 g; a cup of honey weighs 340. The full table of ~40 staples, with sources.
OpenOpen in main scaler
Edit the recipe text, scale by serving count, and copy the result. Same parser as the in-page scaler, more room to work.
OpenFrom the journal
Original essays on the small details.
The why behind the technique — original writing on the ingredient and equipment choices that separate a good cook from a frustrated one.
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Where this recipe sits in the wider tradition.
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