Cantonese Steamed Fish

When I was a kid, my mother used to flake off the fish and only dish out the sauce. And I used to eat that up like crazy. Hi everybody, it's Bill from the Walks of Life. And today I'm going to share with you how to make Cantonese steamed fish. It's a Cantonese classic ready in less than 30 minutes. So it's perfect for a weeknight meal. There's something about that combination of aromatics and the fresh fish. It's healthy. It's delicious. Just the flavors. Everybody loves it. So Cantonese older generation and older generation Chinese love the whole fish. But the younger generation, they just want a fish fillet. No cleaning. And that's what I'm going to show you today. So here's what you need to make this fish. Seven ingredients from our basic pantry essentials. Light soy sauce. Sugar. Salt. A light oil. Scallion. Cilantro. And ginger. And of course, the eighth ingredient is white pepper. Which is optional for this recipe, but I always like to put some. Now one thing I'll tell you is that if you like it saltier, do not add extra soy sauce. The soy sauce tends to start overpowering the fish. What you're looking for is actually more saltiness, not more umami flavor. For that reason also, it's important to use a light soy sauce. Next time you go to a restaurant, you take a look at the steamed fish that comes out and how light it is. That means that they're using a thin or lighter soy sauce, counting on the salt for the seasoning. Now the first thing we have to do is prep the aromatics. So I've got a nice good piece of ginger. I'm just going to snap off a chunk here. This ginger has been cleaned. So if you have a little bit of skin on it, it's not the end of the world. So you want to first slice it thin. And I like a really fine julienne. Next, we'll julienne our scallions. I cut them in about two and a half, three inch pieces. I like to cut them in half so they don't roll around. Now you can see this may look like a lot of scallions, but the scallions and the ginger is some of the best parts of the dish. So next, take a bunch of cilantro. If you don't like cilantro, you don't have to use it. But cilantro is really, really nice in this dish. And we'll just cut these ends off, stems. I'll cut them a little bit smaller. For the rest of the cilantro, I'll just bunch it up in just a rough chop. I'll mix it all up like that. Look at that. Looks like a lot of cilantro, right? And it is, but it's really good. Next, we're going to make the sauce. Two tablespoons of hot water. About an eighth teaspoon of sugar. I'll probably put like a quarter in there. A quarter teaspoon salt because we have a lot of aromatics. Put a little bit of white pepper. And one and a half tablespoons of light soy sauce. Stir that and make sure it's all dissolved. And now, let's talk about the fish and prepping it on the plate. So we have a heatproof plate here. Traditionally, Cantonese use a whole fish for steaming, but you can easily use a fillet. What kind of fish do I use? As long as it's a flaky white fish, you're good. Flounder or fluke. Sea bass or striped bass. Branzino. Haddock. Ocean perch. Grouper. Cod. Freshwater tilapia. Or even a Chilean sea bass. Today, that cod looked really good. This part's going to cook faster. So a trick to do this, you tuck the thin part of this tail underneath. And then this part, which is also very thin, tuck this under here. Not only is it going to cook evenly, but it really looks nice on the plate. All right, we're here at the wok. And it's important that you don't put too much water in because you don't want the water to boil up over into your plate. Once you get this boiling and steaming, you do want to turn it down because you just want a nice steady steam. So let's talk about steaming. Now, steaming is a much cleaner way, kitchen, odors, everything than frying, which is a real big plus. And it's healthy. I don't have a steaming setup. What do I do? Well, if you have a wok, you have a steaming setup. All you need is a cover. You got to make sure you have a cover on the wok. You can actually use this cover. Or you can use a deep pan like this. And then in here, if you got a plate, you've got a shallow steaming rack. Now, you don't have the shallow steam rack. Just put a couple of chopsticks at the bottom, a little bit of water. And boom, you've got your steamer. Another way to do it, preheat your oven to 325 degrees. You need an oven safe plate like this Pyrex. You can actually put a little bit of water in here, your fish, cover it with foil and steam it in the oven. Now, another nice feature about this Pyrex plate is it has a little lip here. You've got to check your plate and put it in here and make sure there's enough room around that you can actually grab it. We actually have this little gadget on our cooking tools page. So you can go there and check out the link and where to buy these. It's steaming right now. So I'm going to place the fish in here and I'm going to give it six minutes. If you're interested in cooking a whole steamed fish, we do have that in a post with how to actually serve the fish and debone it at the table. We also have how to make a steamed whole fish in black bean sauce. All right, that's our timer. Let's check the fish. Oh, that looks pretty good. So you may be wondering, how do I know when my fish is done? I use this butter knife. After six minutes, one minute less than when I think it's going to be done, take this knife and just slowly press it into the fish. If I press it in and I feel resistance and I don't hit the plate, that means I've hit raw fish and it's still not done yet. And we let it go a little bit more. Oh, and this fish is done. Now we've got some liquid here. A lot of people ask me, why don't we leave this? This is good. Not really, because it's kind of fishy. You want to taste the freshness of the fish. Take this and very easy. I'm just going to tip the plate over. We're just going to place it right here. And now we're going to make our sauce. I'm going to have a small pan here on medium heat. I'm going to put one to two tablespoons of neutral oil. And as that's heating up, I'm actually going to put two-thirds of our ginger in there. There you go. There's the sizzle. It takes a little while to cook. So while that's happening, I'm going to put about two-thirds of the scallions and also the cilantro and try to get most of the stems in there. This is what we're going to do as a topping. So now I'm going to turn it down a little bit. I don't want it to burn. And I'm just going to pour our sauce right in here. And I'm going to turn the flame off. And now this is ready for the fish. Next, we're going to heat another one to two tablespoons of oil here. While that's heating, I'm going to put these raw aromatics on the fish. Should I get every last drop of that? We've got our heated oil here. This is how we're going to finish it. Beautiful. And it smells so good. Let's go give it a try. I like to spoon a little bit of sauce on top right before serving. Any of the bits that didn't get some love, they get it now. Get a nice healthy piece of fish topped with aromatics. And this is exactly how I would serve it. Spoon some more sauce and aromatics right on top. And that is the perfect serving. Give it a shot. Let's give it a try. Perfectly seasoned. Really nice. It's a little bit on the salty side, but I like that. And with the rice, it's a perfect meal. For the children, move this. Take a little bit of rice. Put it right here. Fish. Put it on here. Oh, look at that. I got a little rabbit fish here. If you're like I was, you'd be very particular about these greens, and you wouldn't want it if you take it off, just like Ethan, my grandson. And now I'm going to take the sauce only. Spoon it over. And now this is a perfect dish for a young toddler or even a baby. Mush up this fish and eat it like that. This fish fillet was 10 ounces, so this was about $10. At a restaurant like this, it's a minimum of $22, $23. In less than 30 minutes, you've got this restaurant quality meal. You're eating at home, relaxed on the couch, in front of the TV, whatever. Can't beat it. If you enjoyed this video and you love Cantonese steamed fish, be sure to give it a like. Subscribe to our YouTube channel because it'll really help us out to make more content like this for you in the future. And be sure to visit thewalksoflife.com for our detailed recipe and a whole host of other recipes that I'm sure you'll enjoy. Thanks, folks. All right, Mama, time to come and get some fish. It's great.