Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Tilapia along with all the Tilapia containing recipes presented on this site, with 25 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Tilapia recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Tilapia as a major wild food ingredient.



Tilapia is the common name applied to almost 100 species of cichlid fish from the tilapiine cichlid tribe (the genera: Oreochromis, Sarotherodon and Tilapia) that are commonly used by humans as food. They require a warm freshwater habitat (typically they cannot survive in waters below 21°C in temperature). They are native to Africa and the Middle east, but because they grow very rapidly they have been introduced or are farmed in India, Asia and the Caribbean.

The common name tilapia is based on the name of the cichlid genus Tilapia, which is itself a latinization of thiape, the Tswana (a Bantu language of Southern Africa) word for 'fish'.

Historically, they have been of major importance in artisan fishing in Africa and the Levant, and are of increasing importance in aquaculture. Indeed, tilapia is the fifth most important fish in fish farming with production reaching 1 505 804 tonnes. Because of their large size, rapid growth, and palatability, tilapiine cichlids are the focus of major farming efforts. They are also primarily vegetarian, which makes their farming easier than other fish and more ecologically sound.

China is currently the largest tilapia producer in the world, followed by Egypt. Commercially grown tilapia are almost exclusively male. Cultivators use hormones, such as testosterone, to reverse the sex of newly spawned females. Because tilapia are prolific breeders, the presence of female tilapia results in rapidly increasing populations of small fish, rather than a stable population of harvest-size animals.

The flesh of tilapia is firm and quite mild in flavour. They can be readily filleted and may be baked, roasted, fried, steamed, stir-fried and braised; either whole or as fillets. Depending on species coloration can be grey, silver, black or even red. They are one of the most readily obtained freshwater fish world-wide and can be used in any recipe calling for a freshwater fish or a firm-fleshed fish.