The Aldi Finds That Copycat McDonald's Filet-O-Fish With Low Effort

McDonald's is home to some pretty iconic burgers, not to mention some of the best fast food french fries in the biz. But McDonald's Filet-O-Fish is also a wildly popular fast food item with a colorful origin story. Created out of a necessity for the meatless Fridays of Lent, the Filet-O-Fish got its start as a part of a cooking competition in the 1960s. The Filet-O-Fish beat out a fruit-centric pineapple pattied Hula burger, and quickly became an instant hit with Lent-observing Christians. Whether you observe the practice or not, McDonald's Filet-O-Fish is now a permanent menu item, and hundreds of millions of them are sold year-round.

The Filet-O-Fish sandwich is perfect in its simplicity, featuring a battered and fried Alaskan pollock that is wild caught and sourced from sustainable fisheries, slathered with tartar sauce, topped with a half slice of American cheese, and served in a steamed bun. Of course, with any virally acclaimed sandwich, there's bound to be copycat recipes to fulfill your fish sandwich cravings at home. In fact, you can make the most affordable copycat with Aldi finds. Considering many Aldi dupes are way better than their name brand counterparts, you can count on these Aldi products to deliver a worthy McDonald's fish sandwich dupe with minimal effort.

Not only does Aldi supply a wealth of frozen fish filets to make your own sandwich at home, but Aldi's Fremont Fish Market brand offers a limited-time frozen breaded filet of wild-caught Alaskan pollock modeled directly off McDonald's prized sandwich. Labeled as pollock fish portions, these filets come in a box of four for under $6, which means that each patty costs under $2. Considering a Filet-O-Fish sandwich typically costs between $4 and $6, an Aldi fish filet dupe is a steal, and will supply you with four sandwiches — or you can double or triple the fish in your copycat by piling on the patties.

Choose between original and dill flavors ready to bake or air fry right out of the packaging. The original pollock fish portions are a dead ringer for the mild and delicate Filet-O-Fish filet. On the other hand, the dill flavored filet reminds consumers of Wendy's crispy panko fish sandwich, which ranked third place in our review of fast food fish sandwiches. You could heat the patties in the oven, but an air fryer will maximize the crispy breaded coating in less time.

The filets debuted in February 2024 for a limited time in Aldi grocery stores. Since then, they have appeared once more during the Lent months of 2025. While no official announcement has been made, it's safe to assume that they'll be back on Aldi shelves this February, March, and April.

The Fremont Fish market's Alaskan pollock portions may be the best option for a Filet-O-Fish patty doppelganger, but they're only available a few months out of the year. Consequently, you'll need a year-round alternative to fulfill year-round fish sandwich cravings. Fortunately, Aldi has many frozen fish filets that work well in a homemade Filet-O-Fish sandwich. The best year-round options are Aldi's Crunchy Fish Fillets, Beer Battered Cod Fillets, and Wild Caught Fish Sticks, all from the Fremont Fish Market brand.

Like McDonald's, the Crunchy Fish Fillets from Aldi are made with Alaskan pollock and come in boxes of 10 filets for under $6, a much cheaper option than the limited time fish portions. However, the filets are long and thin, so you might have to cut them in half to reposition them to fit into the compact bun.

The beer battered cod has a delightfully crisp and crunchy coating, albeit thicker than the Filet-O-Fish. Plus, cod is a flakey white fish with a similarly mild flavor profile to Alaskan pollock. The beer battered cod comes in five large fillets per box and costs around $5. Finally, the Wild Caught Fish Sticks were some of our personal favorite frozen fish products from Aldi's selection, though they require that you assemble four fish sticks per sandwich to mimic the characteristic square fish patty. 

The fish filet is certainly the star of the show in a Filet-O-Fish dupe, but a sandwich is the sum of its parts. Aldi has all the ingredients you need, starting with the store's proprietary Burman's Original Tartar Sauce. If you want to branch out, we tasted and ranked different tartar sauce brands and loved Legal Sea Foods House Tartar sauce by Stonewall Kitchen. Of course, you can always make your own tartar sauce from scratch. In fact, we'd recommend it. 

Making tartar sauce from scratch gives you free reign to make it as flavorful as possible. You can try our recipe for simple tartar sauce, a four-ingredient blend of mayo, dried dill, lemon juice, and diced dill pickles. Use Aldi's proprietary Burman's Mayo or stick with Hellman's, which is also available at Aldi. You can find both whole dill pickles and dill relish under Aldi's Great Gherkins brand. The grocery chain also sells dill veggie dips and dill and cucumber tzatziki that would pair beautifully with a Filet-O-Fish sandwich.

McDonald's once debuted a now discontinued version of the Filet-O-Fish with a tartar sauce that featured the iconic Old Bay seasoning. However, you could make a homemade Old Bay seasoning from various spices and aromatics under Aldi's Stonemill brand to upgrade homemade tartar sauce — and your fish sandwich as a whole.

No Filet-O-Fish sandwich is complete without a thin slice of gooey American cheese to bring some richness and saltiness to an umami rich fish filet and tangy, creamy tartar sauce. As for American cheese, you can find the classic Kraft Singles at Aldi. However, we think the Kraft brand makes the worst American cheese available. So, you're better off buying the cheaper Happy Farms Aldi brand American cheese slices.

All you need is half a slice of American cheese to directly copy a Filet-O-Fish. This is the perfect amount to bring a gooey, salty element without overpowering the tartar sauce or the mild umami of the fish filet. That said, you can always add a whole slice for an especially decadent fish sandwich. If you decide to stack two, patties you can separate them with a whole slice of American cheese, letting the heat from the freshly baked patties melt the cheese and adhere the patties.

Aldi has a vast selection of bread for you to choose from under the proprietary brands like Specially Select, L'Oven, and Simply Nature. Although you can get regular old L'Oven hamburger buns, the Specially Selected brioche buns would be a major upgrade. Considering how much we loved the Specially Selected brioche loaf in a recent taste test of Aldi breads, the brioche buns are sure to be a hit.

If you really want to imitate the Filet-O-Fish, you will need to steam the bun. The soft, squishy steamed bun is the special touch that you probably never noticed, but it's crucial to the textural integrity of the sandwich as a soft bun won't upstage the flakey, delicate fried fish center. It only takes around 5 minutes to steam multiple buns using a metal steamer with parchment paper on top to hold the buns. If you don't have a steamer, you can opt for an upside-down bowl in a larger pot.

Add an inch of water to the pot, place a bowl upside down in the water, and a plate on top of the bowl to hold one or two buns. The quickest method is steaming a bun in the microwave which entails wrapping a bun in a moist paper towel and zapping it for 30 seconds. With all that, you can enjoy your own Filet-O-Fish sandwich right at home.